- What Is Domain Age?
- Does Domain Age Affect SEO?
- Analyzing Website Ranking Potential by Domain Age
- Potential SEO Ranking Factors that Domain Age Impacts
- Domain Age & SEO - The Takeaway
What Is Domain Age?
Domain age generally refers to how long ago a website owner first registered the domain of a website. When it comes to SEO, domain age describes how old the website is and how long the website has been active. For search engines like Google, domain age is typically based on when it is first identified through a link on the Internet or when the website is first indexed. Because this information is not publicly available from search engines, most website owners and SEO practitioners choose to look at the domain age based on a website’s registration, which is generally easier to identify.Does Domain Age Affect SEO?
The role of domain age on SEO and a website’s ranking potential is frequently debated. So, naturally, domain age matters, but probably not as much as you may think. While Google’s John Mueller has stated that domain age does not directly impact rankings, it would be inaccurate to say that domain age has no role in SEO. [embed]https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1147051694280388608[/embed] There is no causal relationship between the age of a website ranking higher than a newer website based on domain age. But, domain age does have a solid correlation to many factors related to the length of time that a website has existed. Ultimately, new domains will have a tough time outranking competitors with older domains until other things, such as content quality and backlinks, can catch up.Analyzing How Long SEO Takes for a New Website
If you started a new business website today, how long would it take to rank on Google? Well, that depends. To answer this question, we need to break down what it takes for a website to show up on Google and what we mean by ranking on Google.- Crawled = a website has been discovered by Google, and it can use its web crawlers to fetch a website. To make this easier for a new website, simply setting up Google Search Console and submitting the website will help Google crawl it within hours.
- Indexed = Google has discovered your website and has recognized it as a website capable of showing up in search results for potential search queries. Indexing should happen within days of your website being first crawled as long as there are no issues. To see if your website has been indexed, use the following search modifier ‘site:’ when searching on Google.
- Ranking = Your website shows up in the search results when you type in a specific search query. A website is ranked on Google if it shows up on any search results page, even though 91% of users don’t ever look beyond the first page of results. Therefore it is crucial to clarify more specific goals for rankings, such as first page rankings, top 5 rankings, or ranking #1 for a particular search phrase.
- Ranking for branded phrases = Branded searches are specific phrases that directly relate to or include your company’s name or branded products. As long as your brand doesn’t overlap with common words or other businesses, you should see your site ranking for branded search phrases within two weeks of indexing.
- Ranking for low-competition long-tail phrases = The level of competition and specificity of the search phrase will impact how quickly you start ranking. A low competition search query that is hyper-specific, such as “Mexican restaurant on Main Street in Stockton, California.” For this type of long-tail phrase, your website could be ranking within a month.
- Ranking for high competition phrases = These search phrases are often searched by millions of people each month and have many businesses competing for this web traffic. To rank for a phrase such as “Nike running shoes” you would need to put significant effort into SEO over a long time. You should expect to put in at least 3 years of SEO for the high-end competitive search phrases before you expect to start ranking.
New Websites Facing the Google Sandbox
When a new website publishes content, SEO experts often notice that it is significantly more challenging to rank for search phrases when compared to a more established existing website. This observation is often described as Google’s Sandbox Effect - a period of time that makes it more difficult for new websites to rank on Google’s search results. While Google has denied a probation period that keeps new websites from ranking, it is clear to see sandbox-like effects based on their algorithms. Google heavily values trust and authority, which a new website will not have. Below is a quote from Google’s John Mueller (Webmaster Trends Analyst) about the sandbox effect from Feb 23rd, 2018.With regards to the sandbox, we don’t really have this traditional sandbox that a lot of SEOs used to be talking about in the years past. We have a number of algorithms that might look similar, but these are essentially just algorithms trying to understand how the website fits in with the rest of the websites trying to rank for those queries. […] It’s always kind of tricky in the beginning when we have a new website and we don’t quite know where we should put it.It is also important to acknowledge that Google does not look at every industry or vertical in the same way. For example, medical, financial, and legal websites often face a more difficult barrier before Google trusts a new website enough to show it in rankings for specific search phrases.
Analyzing Website Ranking Potential by Domain Age
Now that we have discussed how long it takes for a new website to rank in general, let’s look at a few examples of website ranking by domain age.Domain Age of Top Websites
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk2hnu-9Avs[/embed] It probably shouldn’t be surprising that the top websites on the internet in 2021 have been around for years. For example, Yahoo.com was ranked the 2nd most popular website in January 1996 and, as of 2022, remains the 5th most popular website globally. While Yahoo is the only website that has consistently remained in the top 10 most popular websites over the last 25 years, you’ll find that many of the top 10 websites have a domain age that dates back many years. Below is a table of the ten most visited websites in the United States in July 2022.Domain | Domain Age | Domain Creation Date | Company Founding Date |
google.com | 24 years, 11 months | 9/15/97 | Sep-98 |
youtube.com | 17 years, 6 months | 2/15/05 | Feb-05 |
facebook.com | 25 years, 4 months | 3/29/97 | Feb-04 |
amazon.com | 27 years, 9 months | 11/1/94 | Jul-94 |
yahoo.com | 27 years, 6 months | 1/18/95 | Jan-94 |
twitter.com | 22 years, 6 months | 1/21/00 | Mar-06 |
instagram.com | 18 years, 2 months | 6/4/04 | Oct-10 |
wikipedia.org | 21 years, 7 months | 1/13/01 | Jan-01 |
reddit.com | 16 years, 6 months | 4/29/05 | Jun-05 |
discord.com | 21 years, 0 months | 11/6/00 | May-15 |