It’s often detabed that the age of a domain is beneficial for SEO and thus your site. Discussions at various SEO forums and webmaster forums often end in no result or two groups – One favoring the theory while the other discarding the theory! Hence I decided to post my opinion about it with some valid points of discussuions which are many a times not taken into account.

First, what’s the theory?

Well established sites have old domains and hence by reverse logic, older the domain more trustful the website will be from Search Engines point of view. Thus, it will give more weightage to older domains. Also spammers or unstable websites are often sold/passed on/closed early and hence their domain are not new or not old. Thus, newer domains are not given that much importance by search engines!

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Let’s study both the things first and then talk about other factors.

It’s certainly true that well established websites have older domains (as it takes time to get establish and hence domains grow old). But reverse cannot be true as:

• Domains can be made to look older by just registering them and parking them.
• A 301 redirect from older domain can make a newer domain look older to Search Engines.

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Thus, at least I, don’t agree that reverse of the first point in the above theory can be true. Now let’s move on to the second point.

• If a well established hosting company moves into domain business as well and registers a new domian name for the domain names business, why can’t it be trusted!
• If the theory holds true, then it would mean, no matter how good reputation a company has in the outside world, it can gain reputation in SEO only by growing old!

I am not taking a stand to any side of the above argument. What I just want to stress on is that only domain age is NOT important. With old domains comes the PR, backlinks, name etc and hence it’s given more important by Search Engines. Suppose there is a 5 year old parked domain that is not indexed and has no backlinks, then I feel there is NO point in wasting $50 for buying that old domain instead of a new one! It won’t make any difference in the eyes of Search Engines.

The only thing to be remembered is, old domains are good only if they have any kind of good reputation with them. Mere age cannot be taken as a positive factor for SEO. I hope this clears some of the confusion that still prevails in the minds of people!