Importance of age

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kflanagan28

kflanagan28

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I seen one of the strangest things on Google today. A site ranking for two competitive keywords (top 3 ranking), when it:

1. Didn't have any of those keywords on page (page title, meta description etc).
2. Had one external link pointing to the page (not using keyword)
3. Had a couple of hundred internal links pointing to the page. The keywords in question were not used that much.

But it's an old site. Kinda says a lot for site flipping if you want to start ahead in terms of rank.
 
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link8r

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IMHO Age is an important factor. Sites that ranked 7 years ago still rank today even though competitor sites have far more links etc. There's so many variables but older sites are definitely easier to rank.
 
nevf

nevf

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Age before beauty ;)

Personally, I dont see how an aged domain is automatically better than a new domain. It's all about content in my opinion...
 
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hughdurkin

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Yup, Google has loads of respect for older domains.

In one way that's a great thing as Google clearly trust sites that have 'stood the test of time' in their eyes. On the other hand though newer, better sites for the user can lose out big time in this fashion.
 
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link8r

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Age is very important. Google remembers every domain and when it was indexed for what. I recently restored somebody elses domain from the dead using my God-like powers - I mean my God-addy powers - and low and behold Google had remembered the many hundreds of keywords this site had over a year and a half ago, as well as much of its crawl history. Turned out to be a spammy domain etc and well, the rest is history (with dire consequences).

Anyway. take an old domain with little seo and a brand new one. SEO both of them as equally as you can - watch the old one zoom ahead (all things being equal, which is probably impossible to create).

I remember reading that age was a part of the Google algorithm but can't for the life of me remember where that was....
 
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link8r

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nevf said:
It's all about content in my opinion...
Click to expand...

Just on that point - determination of PageRank involves 99.99% - 100% off-site work - i.e. no relationship to content.

A website with great content and NO inbound links won't ever rank well in a competitive environment. I agree absolutely that lots of clever unique content, niche content etc is important. But Google uses voting and where those votes come from. you can't have SERP authority as an island.

here is an interesting one about age - take this search: conservatories limerick - Google Search

The first domain, Conservatories Direct - it has less than 10 inbound links but it's 9 years old. Always has been number 1, was the first of it's kind. Still there. No SEO, not 1 stitch!
 
M

MPC

New Member
Trust issue with Google. Old domains are great. A client recently had a domain which they registered 7 years ago but never set up the domain so it was doing nothing.

Anyway I set it up and ranked it number 1 within a month and a half for its main key term. It was a quite competitive term (49,300,000 results).

Thing is I thought Google would still consider it a new domain as it had never been set up despite been bought years ago. Anyone have the same experience? I have not had this happen for any new domains with similarly competitive key terms.
 
kflanagan28

kflanagan28

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linkr8

Interesting example you put up for the old site with very little inbound links. I was trying to figure out was it the sites age that mattered or the link trust of it's inbound links. What I mean by this is, if a site is 5/6/7 years old and acquired links a long time ago. Then those links would have aged and grown in trust. So perhaps Google places a lot more importance on the trust side of his algorithm (all their links will be trusted sites).

Has any of you tried site flipping. Seems to me this business may grow during a recession as people need to make a quick buck and there may be some bargains to be had on sitepoint.

Thanks

Kieran
 
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link8r

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kflanagan28 said:
linkr8

Interesting example you put up for the old site with very little inbound links. I was trying to figure out was it the sites age that mattered or the link trust of it's inbound links. What I mean by this is, if a site is 5/6/7 years old and acquired links a long time ago. Then those links would have aged and grown in trust. So perhaps Google places a lot more importance on the trust side of his algorithm (all their links will be trusted sites).
Click to expand...

Yeah, we've seen sites grow with importance over time with even 4/5 links from rubbish sources. Flipping it is a different concept. Some people believe it's just the links, but I think it's the topic/index that the site falls into. If you flip a site from say a pub in Waterford to a Dubai investment company, I doubt it'd work well.

kflanagan28 said:
Has any of you tried site flipping.
Click to expand...

Yes, with some interesting and some disastrous outcomes! It's clear that websites are indexed against certain indeces, like a keyword or keyphrase or topic. Moving betweem them can result in a change in it's importance, relevance and PageRank. I don't think you could sit on a domain for 5 years and then change into a Poker site and it would just fly up, even if it had a PR of 5/10, I think it'd drop, as it wouldn't have the inbound links to justify it in that category (IMHO). I've tried it a few times. But it would be a lot easier.

Hey Kieran,
 
kflanagan28

kflanagan28

New Member
Hey

Good points. I agree with you on the site flipping. It would be hard to take an existing domain and completely change it. I was kind of thinking along the lines of buying a site in a niche you knew to be profitable and that person undervalued their site (didn't have the ability or time to monetize it).

But still interesting points on flipping a domain to a totally different market as I have wondered how that would work out.

Cheers

Kieran
 
J

Juice

Member
Age is a factor, but only for the first few months in my experience. Once your domain is about 6 months old (and has been indexed for that period), it is possible to have it rank better than much older domains.
 
gav240z

gav240z

New Member
Maximise said:
Age is a factor, but only for the first few months in my experience. Once your domain is about 6 months old (and has been indexed for that period), it is possible to have it rank better than much older domains.
Click to expand...

I don't know about that. Some old domains get penalised for grey area / black hat techniques which can hinder their progress. However if a new domain has excellent original content it won't take long to get ranked I agree.
 
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Hafsoh

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Age of domain is an important factor, it's show how many time to live and maintain your reputation on Search Engines. then the span of registration of the site also matters
 
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link8r

New Member
Maximise said:
Age is a factor, but only for the first few months in my experience. Once your domain is about 6 months old (and has been indexed for that period), it is possible to have it rank better than much older domains.
Click to expand...

I think we meant that if you are going to compete in SEO, having a 2 year old domain is better than starting with a brand new or even a 6 month old domain.
 
J

Juice

Member
gav240z said:
I don't know about that. Some old domains get penalised for grey area / black hat techniques which can hinder their progress. However if a new domain has excellent original content it won't take long to get ranked I agree.
Click to expand...

Naturally if a black-hat techniques have been used and have been detected by the search engines, that will go against that domain, I agree wth that.
 
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