mklink.com

[chrisbrook]

If you purchase a domain but leave it dormant, does the age of the site still add up?

[admin]

This is not a straightforward question to answer because once again it relies upon the finer points of Google’s essentially secret algorithms. Well established websites which have older domains do tend to rank highly in the search engines. Exactly how much weight is carried in Google’s algorithms simply by (in isolation) when a domain was registered is not possible to say. For example the high ranking websites we observe as having older domains may be achieving the higher rankings because the incoming links and the content are well established over time. Therefore I think we could only really say with any certainty that older domains appear to be more trusted by Google, and that there appears to be some importance attached to domains purely because of age, but the level of importance for just this one factor is difficult to tell.

Another aspect to this is if you've purchased an older domain that used to belong to somebody else, and that domain has a bit of a negative history with Google. This can often result in that negativity being passed on to you, even though you're a completely differnt business using a completely different website. In situations like these it's a case of contacting Google.