Domain age is an important factor and many people base their valuation on it. So why is age regarded so much? With the age comes credibility, it is a known fact that an older site will rank better in search engine results than a freshly registered domain name.

However there’s a catch. The site should be indexed in order to factor it into domain name appraisal. Unfortunately, majority of buy-as-investment domains have been parked or just left inactive. Here comes the sad bit.

If you buy a domain name that has been registered back in 1998 but has never been indexed by search engines, it is just like buying a fresh domain name. You will spend your first year in the sandbox!

The same goes with domains that had dropped long time ago. Google has kicked it from its index and forgotten about it. Even if Archive.org shows that it has some history on the domain, it doesn’t count in domain name appraisal.

I will say it again: parking is a bad idea, a BAAD idea!!! You feed your parking company and leave yourself in a very disadvantageous situation. Whereas if you built a micro-site for each of your domain name, you would earn more from ads and you would build age, credibility and price. Then when you decided to sell the site and ask for domain name appraisal, you would be given a much nicer estimate! Remember that parked domains almost never get indexed and don’t build the age factor. Micro-sites do! Besides you keep all your revenue!

Dropped Names – to Buy or Not

Definitely, don’t discount dropped domain names. Just learn to tell the good from the bad.

How to say if a dropped domain is any good:

  • It has a genuine Google PageRank. Use SeoQuake toolbar to determine that. Explore Yahoo Linkdomain and compare the PR with the number and quality of backlinks. If you find a PR3 site with zero or only a couple of backlinks, it is a fake PR.
  • Google has retained the domain and at least some sub-pages in its index. If the site has been kicked out of the index, domain age doesn’t count any more. You are buying just another fresh domain name that will spend the next year in the sandbox.
  • Look it up on Archive.org. If it had looked like a normal business website, you should be OK. You are trying to find the shameful past of that domain name. Has it hosted *orn, junk or excessive links?

Not every domain will have its value increased with age. Don’t bother with parked domains, inactive domains and ones that have been banned or removed from Google index (unless it is a one-word, a keyword or any other unmissable brilliant kind of name). If you are doomed to spend a year in a sandbox, don’t spill a fortune on it, you might as well pick a fresh name for a reg fee.

Bottomline

So, is age a factor in domain name appraisal? Yes, yes and yes. An aged domain gives you PageRank, residual traffic and credibility, but… There is a but! A parked domain will usually give you no advantage over a fresh name even if it is 10 years old.