Does domain age count if never had a website?

I don't think that "domain age" simply is going to benefit you much with no content on the website at all. Having said that, it is often believe that google do check domain registration , renewal and expiring dates.
If your two domains have some backlinks, domain age will only benefit you when you will start SEO for your sites.

Glad I cud help.
Alex

If an aged domain has maintained its backlinks, regardless whether it comes with a site or not, then you can either do 2 things:

* develop it into a website and have it point to your money site ( you'll both benefit from its traffic or it's link juice)
* develop it into a full working website/blog and monetize it - you can increase it's value further and can fetch more $ should you decide to sell it in the future

That said, an aged domain that is PR0 or have no backlinks at all, should be treated just like a newly registered domain. ....unless it is a keyword quality domain name like "weddingplanner.com, designerclothes.com" domain age per se, doesn't really amount to anything...

Many believe it does , myself included @ some point in my 'career' as a domainer

As for your websites re:
As DogFoodRecipesAndTreats
PuppyFoodRecipesAndTreats

...if they're getting enough searches per day ( around 30-50 EXACT), have manageable competition ( 50K or less competing webpages,) and proved that these are "buying" keywords ( as opposed to search terms for the mere purpose of providing info to net surfers) then you should keep them.

I hope this helps...

Domain age is DEFINITELY valuable in the search engine's eyes but to be honest 12 months isn't all that long. If you plan to put original content on there and flesh them out then I would definitely hold onto them but if you know they will merely sit there you probably wouldn't be losing out on too much right now by letting them expire. It depends on what your plans for them are really. Now if they were 5 to 10 years old that would be a different story...

I am a newbie on this forum. Never really participated in any resources like this when I was learning about IM, but now that I have built up a number of real businesses online I wanted to try to "give something back" to those starting out and thought this resource might be a good place to see if I can add some value.

Re Aged Domains

IMO far too many people don't understand the "definition" of an aged domain.

From an SEO perspective an aged domain is one that has been under development for a long enough period of time to be considered having earn't some "trust" ( not defined by how many links it has or how much content is on it ) but by virtue how long it has been "trading"

In the same way that you might look at a bricks and mortar business and ask long long have you been "trading" ? The idea being that a business that has been trading for 5 years or 10 years is considered "established" and there infers some measure of trust to do the right thing.

Most people reference the original registration date of a domain as it being "aged" but thats just too simplistic IMO.

Real aged domains are domains that have been under development for a number of years, and by default will also have some content and links associated with them.

For those that might question this definition the follow up question is this...

Do you think that Google would infer that a domain that was registered and parked for 5 years as having done something to justify earning their trust, ( that is what this is all about ) if you where the Google Engineer responsible for this factor would you add a bias for that or would you only consider if it was an "established / trading" domain.

Maybe we should change the definition from ""aged" domain to "established" domain

If your looking to buy an established domain, locate a site that has been around a couple of years, had some small measure of work done on it a dribble of content, a few links offer the owner a few dollars and breath new life into it, there are 100,000's of them, they take a bit more work to find and negotiate to purchase but this one factor can save you months of work for a couple of $100 investment.

Consider parked and dropped domains as being equal to new and "unproven" domains for IMO that is the way Google sees them.

Attach content to those domain names and instantly the value will go up. Domain age does count in specific instances, but someone can outrank you if they know what they are doing.

I am very interested in the idea of aged domains --- anyone?

I have an aged domain fineartplatinum dot com which has never been used. Recently I started using it thinking with its age (8 years) it's going to go well. Instead, it ranks very poorly just like a month old domain.