By: RH
I have new domainers ask about age and domains, they put a bunch of myths together like, Google favors aged domains and it has to be valuable if its been regged for 14 years.
First off if you are not developing a name the Google footnote does not mean as much if the name does not make sense for development.
Secondly, maybe the person who renewed for 14 years had a fondness for the domain, maybe it meant something to he or she that was unique only to them. Maybe they are just clueless, because they renewed it for so long does not mean they knew what they were doing in domaining.
I look for aged domains absolutely, but there has to be more than the age, the age is a bonus. XZ8q.com regged for 14 years does not mean much. No commercial value, pretty hard to develop. It was probably the old owners nickname on forums or something.Those names do not have value, leading with that in a sales thread means very little.
You want products, services, short 3 letter domains, a cool sounding made up word something like sello.com to have age as an extra bonus.
There are always aged domains on Go Daddy closeouts, sometimes you find a winner, many times you find one almost good enough but not quite, and there are many that are just plain not worth $1.
Ask yourself this question, "If it was not aged would I still be interested ? If the answer is no then don't buy it just for age.
Curious as to your thought on this. If I had two 5 letter dot com domains which are both brandable and pronounceable and one of the domains is 2 years old and the other is 12 years old. Lets say for the sake of this thought that the 2 year old one I can sell for $1000 what would you value the 12 year old one if all things being equal and the only difference is age? Would the 12 year one one be worth an extra 20%, 50%, 200% etc… We all know its not an exact science but I would love to get your professional opinion.
I think the age in that case has some value and could be another 50 to 100 % especially selling to an end user who believes Google would favor an aged domain.
There is always debate, and of course brandable 5 letter domains can be all over the place, but I think age would add some value to an end user going to develop the name.
http://blog.serpiq.com/how-important-is-domain-age-why-data-driven-seo-trumps-guru-opinions/
As pointed out by a few commenters, these percentages do not prove that Google favors older domains over newer domains, and there are other factors that could be at play. For example, older domains have had more time to build up content, social signals, links and overall trust. So while the raw age of a domain might not directly affect a site’s rankings, the data does show that old domains make up the vast majority of #1 results and it should be something to at least bring up for discussion when planning a SEO campaign.
Another article http://rapidwebseo.com/matt-cutts-does-domain-age-really-matter.php
It definitely makes sense that a 10 year old domain that has been a website for the entire 10 years would definitely outrank a 10 year old domain that has been parked its whole life and just recently became a website. I have noticed when selling to certain clients that age in their eyes is very special but I’ve realized its not because of search engine reasons but because most end users don’t even know what SEO is but I believe in their minds that they put some correlation between age and value. Something similar to cheap wine and good wine when basically the only difference is the age because each wine is basically made the same way to a point.
I have sold many domains stating that the domain is 12 years old and I have X amount of dollars invested in renewals all these years BLAH BLAH BLAH and they feel like they are getting a great deal even though I just picked it up on a drop a week ago. You must remember that your basic buyer is clueless how to check anything when it comes to domains because truthfully if there was an easy uniform way of checking WHOIS most domainers would sell a lot more names but the problem is most people don’t even know how to find out who owns a domain much less buy it.