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I often see that domainers misunderstand how the domain age works, so here is some information that will help.
If you know all of this, great, you are ahead of the curve and continue about your day. This is for people new to domaining, SEO, or development that are not aware of this.
The WhoIs registration date is NOT the only metric of the domain age.
The best way to determine a domains age is through the age according to Archive.org.
This is widely known in the SEO & development community, but most domain buyers overlook great names that have a recent reg date, but that have a 10+ year archived domain age.
The archived domain age at Archive.org is roughly defined as the first time the internet had awareness that the domain existed.
Google uses their own database, the Archive.org database, and the historical zone file to determine domain age. Using all three databases, Google has a complete record of when a domain first existed.
The zone file is the list of all actively registered domain names, when a name "drops" it is essentially being removed from the zone file.
There have been many comments made by Google that indicates that domain age as an SEO metric is not as important as it once was. Many developers are completely ignoring the domain age and looking at keyword, monthly SV, and domain health (too much for this post).
It is not clear how much weight Google gives to the WhoIS age versus the Archived age, however I can personally say that I have ranked (and sold) recently dropped domains with an old archived age at the top of SERP for keywords.
Think about it, if AOL.com was dropped today, would it be 1 day old? No, thats not logical, and our search engine lords know this as well.
Sometimes there are even names that have reg dates older than the archived date according to Archive.org. This is because crawlers did not detect the name for some time as they scoured the internet.
Since Google is using the historical zone file to supplement their data, then I imagine that they have that stored as well. Truthfully, nobody knows how this effects Google SERP, because Matt Cutts would never actually come out and make a clear statement about anything so ambiguous and non-content related.
In the end, keep in mind that the archived age is just important as the registered age.
The actual WhoIS date comes in handy when you are looking for domains to buy. I am not saying that every domain from 1997 is an amazing domain, in fact you can hand reg a litany of them right now. However, usually someone will hold onto a name for a long time for a good reason, so looking for old domains according to their whois reg date is important.
The archived domain name also comes in handy when looking for domains to buy, because unfortunately some domainers and end users go broke. This is not a jab at anyone, it happens. This can work to your advantage buy searching for the archived domain age.
Essentially, if a buyer (end user or domainer) bought the domain and decided not to continue to own it is because they tried to sell it and could not find a buyer, its junk, they died, or they just went broke and could not afford to keep the name.
Let's not glorify ourselves, we are all intellectual property repo men.
Searching by the archived domain age can highlight old domains that were recently acquired, but left to drop off the zone list for whatever reason. Use your own judgement, there are some great domains people overlook every day.
When it comes to the sale of names, sometimes having a recently reged domain is a turnoff for buyers that also don't understand how archived domain age works in SERP. So if you are buying drops, be prepared with this information to answer any objections from potential buyers.
Good luck, I hope this information is helpful to you. Cheers!
If you know all of this, great, you are ahead of the curve and continue about your day. This is for people new to domaining, SEO, or development that are not aware of this.
The WhoIs registration date is NOT the only metric of the domain age.
The best way to determine a domains age is through the age according to Archive.org.
This is widely known in the SEO & development community, but most domain buyers overlook great names that have a recent reg date, but that have a 10+ year archived domain age.
The archived domain age at Archive.org is roughly defined as the first time the internet had awareness that the domain existed.
Google uses their own database, the Archive.org database, and the historical zone file to determine domain age. Using all three databases, Google has a complete record of when a domain first existed.
The zone file is the list of all actively registered domain names, when a name "drops" it is essentially being removed from the zone file.
There have been many comments made by Google that indicates that domain age as an SEO metric is not as important as it once was. Many developers are completely ignoring the domain age and looking at keyword, monthly SV, and domain health (too much for this post).
It is not clear how much weight Google gives to the WhoIS age versus the Archived age, however I can personally say that I have ranked (and sold) recently dropped domains with an old archived age at the top of SERP for keywords.
Think about it, if AOL.com was dropped today, would it be 1 day old? No, thats not logical, and our search engine lords know this as well.
Sometimes there are even names that have reg dates older than the archived date according to Archive.org. This is because crawlers did not detect the name for some time as they scoured the internet.
Since Google is using the historical zone file to supplement their data, then I imagine that they have that stored as well. Truthfully, nobody knows how this effects Google SERP, because Matt Cutts would never actually come out and make a clear statement about anything so ambiguous and non-content related.
In the end, keep in mind that the archived age is just important as the registered age.
The actual WhoIS date comes in handy when you are looking for domains to buy. I am not saying that every domain from 1997 is an amazing domain, in fact you can hand reg a litany of them right now. However, usually someone will hold onto a name for a long time for a good reason, so looking for old domains according to their whois reg date is important.
The archived domain name also comes in handy when looking for domains to buy, because unfortunately some domainers and end users go broke. This is not a jab at anyone, it happens. This can work to your advantage buy searching for the archived domain age.
Essentially, if a buyer (end user or domainer) bought the domain and decided not to continue to own it is because they tried to sell it and could not find a buyer, its junk, they died, or they just went broke and could not afford to keep the name.
Let's not glorify ourselves, we are all intellectual property repo men.
Searching by the archived domain age can highlight old domains that were recently acquired, but left to drop off the zone list for whatever reason. Use your own judgement, there are some great domains people overlook every day.
When it comes to the sale of names, sometimes having a recently reged domain is a turnoff for buyers that also don't understand how archived domain age works in SERP. So if you are buying drops, be prepared with this information to answer any objections from potential buyers.
Good luck, I hope this information is helpful to you. Cheers!
