Domain Age

by Warren
(NY)

There has always been a lot of chat regarding optimizing a website and what actually helps a website rank fastest. In the past, some people have worried more about page rank, and some have worried more about backlinks.

Since there are over 200 factors for determining the position of a website in the search engine's results, it is obvious that I am simplifying things. The key thing to take away from this is that Google has always had its favorites. As such, certain factors have always been more heavily weighted in the past by Google's ranking algorithm. Page rank and backlinks have always been a few of those favorites.

There is one additional item that I'd like to talk about. Although there isn't much that can be done to influence it, a discussion is still warranted. I am referring to a site's domain age. Yes, once you've registered that domain, the clock begins ticking.

Why you might ask, would Google care about a site's domain age?

Well, once upon a time before Google's algorithm became super smart, it was very easy to game Google and the search engine rankings. It was easy to build a website quickly, throw a few backlinks on it and rank. There was a problem though. As the number of low quality sites which ranked increased, the quality of Google's search engine results decreased.

With the addition of domain age to Google's algorithm, it suddenly became more difficult to create bogus/overnight websites. It helped deter those from setting up overnight spammy websites. You could no longer set up a website over night and rank well. Let's face it; Google is in the business of providing the most relevant content to its users. Overnight websites were usually low quality.


I thought this would be a good topic to write about because it seems that Google has been yet again tinkering with its algorithm. Some have speculated that the domain age weighting would be lowered. There is no denying that the domain age factor is important. The real question is, what weighting? All things equal, a 5 year old website/page is not necessarily more relevant than another simply because it is 2 years older. It really depends. A domain age weighting is necessary however it should be limited to a number of years. The content of a new website could be just as relevant as an old site.

So if your website has bounced around in the rankings lately, not to worry. As long as your site's content is relevant and updated, you should be fine. For those of you that are still contemplating a website, let's get going. I know that a website is waiting to be born. The sooner you start your website, the sooner you can start building domain age points.

Don't just make a website, build a business!