Google Answers If Domain Age Impacts Rankings

Somebody on X (previously Twitter) requested if domain age impacted search rankings. Google’s John Mueller units the report straight.

The individual asking the query tweeted:

“Does the age of a website title impression Google search rankings?”

SEOs have for a very long time seen that older domain names correlate with top rankings.

However correlations are typically a poor basis for understanding the world.

For example, the variety of pc science doctorates awarded in the USA correlates precisely with the online game arcade revenues.

What Google’s John Mueller Mentioned About Area Age

Google’s John Mueller tweeted:

“Primarily those that need to promote you aged domains :-)”

And if that’s too ambiguous for some folks, Mueller has previously tweeted:

“No, area age helps nothing.”

Why Do SEOs Consider Area Age Issues?

SEOs have believed for almost twenty years that area age issues, that it was even an essential rating issue.

The thought might have developed from a patent Google filed known as Information retrieval based on historical data.

The patent talked about domains within the context of historic information. However the patent didn’t actually say what SEOs thought it did. Their studying of that patent was 100% incorrect.

The patent has a whole part titled, Area-Associated Info the place area associated info is used to determine spam sites.

Figuring out spam websites shouldn’t be the identical as giving bonus rating factors if a website has been registered for a very long time.

The patent says it makes use of area information to catch throwaway domains utilized by spammers:

“People who try and deceive (spam) serps typically use throwaway or ‘doorway’ domains and try and get hold of as a lot site visitors as doable earlier than being caught.

Info relating to the legitimacy of the domains could also be utilized by search engine when scoring the paperwork related to these domains.”

Subsequent it says that ordinary websites are likely to have domains which are registered for a protracted durations of time, which isn’t the case for throwaway domains.

Right here’s the place SEOs misinterpret the patent. This info shouldn’t be used to rank “authentic” domains. The registration information is used to search out spam websites.

Right here’s what it says:

“Invaluable (authentic) domains are sometimes paid for a number of years upfront, whereas doorway (illegitimate) domains not often are used for greater than a 12 months. Subsequently, the date when a website expires sooner or later can be utilized as a consider predicting the legitimacy of a website and, thus, the paperwork related therewith.”

That assertion is throughout the context of figuring out “illegitimate” domains. There’s nothing there that talks about selling authentic domains, just for figuring out spam domains, that’s the context.

SEOs have a protracted historical past of seeing what they need to see. Nevertheless it’s actually clear that the area historical past information is used for locating spam, not for producing a rating sign.

In that very same part it talks about utilizing DNS historical past info for identifying spam sites:

“By analyzing this information over time for a website, illegitimate domains could also be recognized.

…a listing of known-bad contact info, title servers, and/or IP addresses could also be recognized, saved, and utilized in predicting the legitimacy of a website …”

Lastly, the patent says that the novelty of a reputation server isn’t essentially a nasty factor, however slightly, the novelty of the title server information AND different information factors collectively may imply that the area is spam.

“The novelty of a reputation server won’t mechanically be a damaging consider figuring out the legitimacy of the related area, however together with different components, resembling ones described herein, it may very well be.”

Microsoft filed a similar patent from 2006 that discusses utilizing the area age of the backlinks for figuring out spam websites.

The “background” part of that patent reveals the aim of the patent is for locating spam websites. The patent was created as a result of the price of area registrations grew to become low cost (they used to price round $70/12 months within the late nineties).

The patent says:

“Spammers typically reap the benefits of such presents via a spam method generally known as an online farm. Specifically, spammers buy or in any other case get hold of numerous websites and interlink the websites collectively to extend the websites’ rankings by artificially rising the variety of contributing domains for some or all the websites.”

John Mueller is telling the reality. Area age shouldn’t be used for rating functions. There is no such thing as a patent that means such a factor.

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