Does a domain really “lose its age” after it deletes?
I’m going to preface this post by pointing out that Kenny, the domaining mastermind I am in cahoots with, may have a slightly differing opinion to me on this subject. I will also point out that nobody can really know what goes on behind the giant steel vaulted doors where Google keeps its search monkeys, but we can arrive at conclusions based on observations and what we know about Google and their past behaviours.
We commonly receive two questions, usually in tandem, at the Domainface customer support help desk. They are:
- Do deleting domains “lose their age” and if so, doesn’t that diminish their value?
- How quickly does a deleted domain lose its PageRank and can that PageRank come back, even in part?
Before answering these, we should acknowledge that Google likes to reduce its measure of a site’s authority if that site has any number of things wrong with it. These can be, though are not necessarily limited to, broken internal links, broken backlinks, slow loading speed, poor content, poor navigability and a host of other potential factors. Make sure that you’re not exclusively basing any ranking problems with your aged domain on that domain’s age itself. As always, research, do your own tests and pay attention to the big boys of SEO, who are doing all of this so you don’t have to.
PageRank
PageRank has always been the foundation of Google’s algorithm and is essentially a weighted measure of how important your site is based on its backlink profile, i.e. the number and authority of other sites linking into the site. Also keep in mind that it is is called PageRank, not WebsiteRank. PageRank is based on individual web addresses, which is why sometimes you can come across a website that, for example, has a PageRank of 1 on the front page, but PageRank 4 on one of the article pages. It’s also important to remember that PageRank itself is not a ranking factor; it’s an arbitrary score, or authority generalisation, that is the result of Google’s countless ranking factors for any given website, all poured into a giant pot and baked into a single number between nothing and 10. It does not mean that your site necessarily gets much traffic, or that many people are searching for it, or that it will rank highly for any given search.
So let’s think about this in the context of an expired or deleted domain. Think back to all of those factors that contribute to the PageRank found within the pages of a given domain. How many of these are affected by the fact that the domain was deleted? Here’s a few things that tend to happen when a domain expires:
- The website content is gone, so there’s nothing to index.
- Because the website content is gone, the frequency with which updates were appearing on the site decreases to zero.
- Because all of the pages no longer resolve, some other backlinking websites will likely start to clean up those links, as they don’t like broken links on their websites.
- The website no longer works, so people will stop linking to it; that is, the rate at which backlinks are usually added for that site will drop to zero.
These along with all sorts of other side effects, mean that Google can fairly easily detect that the site is having major problems. It doesn’t like to serve up problematic results for its users, so you’ll probably see the PageRank drop to zero, or even be removed entirely. Google does however recognise that often-times a website can have problems temporarily and then make a full recovery, which means if the problems appear to be solved, there is a chance that the PageRank may recover. You can simulate this recovery by getting the website back online as quickly as possible, keeping the site in line with the content theme that Google had likely categorized the site within previously, and making sure that any backlinks point to working pages with content relevant to the backlink. Do all of these things and our tests have shown that in some (not all) cases, a website can have a partial (if not full) PageRank recovery.
Domain Age
Each domain has a digital certificate of registration called a “whois” record. The whois record shows when the domain was registered and when it will expire (or when it expired). If a domain changes hands before it deletes, the current whois record is retained with the original creation date being preserved and the expiry date updating for the new period that was just paid for. Additionally, the contact details will change to the new owner. If a domain deletes, then it loses its whois record and needs to be registered as a new domain. When that happens, the registrar generates a new whois record for the domain and, without any due diligence, the domain will appear to be brand new. This is the basis of the common belief surrounding a domain “losing” or “keeping” its age.
The problem with the fear people have with the domain’s loss of age is that it centres on two things;
- the fact that Google includes the age of the website as a ranking factor (older domains having more inherent “trust”)
- the assumption that the whois record is the only way that Google knows how old your domain is
I don’t personally believe that Google is so simplistic that the only way they know how old your website is, is by looking at the whois record. They have been indexing the web for a long time now and they retain more data than you can imagine, so you can bet that if a website existed at one time or another, then they know about it. They also know that websites have problems sometimes, that websites change hands and that people link to websites for a reason.
So let’s think about age. If we know that Google applies greater trust when a website has been online for a longer time, then we can infer that the backlinks from older websites convey some of that trust with them. An older website with an existing backlink profile is likely to have some amount of its backlinks coming from similarly-aged websites, so my belief is that the registration date of a given domain’s whois record is not a ranking factor at all, but rather we should be looking at the age of the domain’s backlink profile. If a domain has a lot of backlinks from “old” websites, then we can assert that those domains have had a lot of time to clean up those backlinks and have chosen not to, for whatever reason. Therefore, if we can determine the real age of a domain name, i.e. the first date that it pointed at a live website and started gathering backlinks to that website, then we can infer that the existing backlink profile for the domain may carry a lot of inherent trust and authority that would not be present in a newer domain. This is, in my belief, the basis of why an aged domain often has greater value than a newer domain. Not because of when it was registered, but because of the trust conveyed by its aged backlink profile. Google’s entire search algorithm foundation is built on the link network that composes the web, so this makes a lot of sense to me.
So in conclusion;
- A domain may regain its PageRank, or some part thereof, if you can quickly re-establish the factors with which it was awarded that PageRank in the first place.
- A domain will probably be able to rank more quickly and effectively if it has an aged backlink profile, so use age as a starting point to find domains with aged backlink profiles, but don’t assume value based on the domain’s age itself.
Remember, do your own testing and feel free to refute everything I’ve said; these are just my own observations and conclusions from having spent time in this space.
-Nathan
Excellent article, In my experience, page rank can be recovered if the domain in question is re-registered and placed back onto the site in a matter of days. Any longer, then it leaves you open to Google establish a site with no content, no backlinks to domain etc and that is when your authority will be devalued.
In the domains that I have recovered PR has come back soon after a site is placed on the domain. Sometimes the whole previous PR comes back and sometimes just a bit. Not enough sites to be definitive but usually I get old domain with lots of backlinks so what you are proposing here holds water Nathan
“the fact that Google includes the age of the website as a ranking factor (older domains having more inherent “trust”)”
I not so sure this has ever been proven to be the case. Google has said that older domains would be expected to have more trust as natural links accumulate, but also stated that old domains are not inherently more trustworthy. Do you know otherwise?
@Richard; from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/domain-age-how-important-is-it-for-seo/7296/
“Google’s patent “Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data” of 03/31/2005 reviewed by WebmasterWorld forum hugely accounted for these rumors implying that Google does look into domain registration (1) and renewal (2) dates:
(1) … the date that a domain with which a document is registered may be used as an indication of the inception date of the document.
(2) Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. … Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.”
Why not just find relative domain names that reflect well what the site is about. If there is one “for sale” and is a good buy, get it and build it… but if not, start fresh and create awesome content. Having backlinks and reputation already can be a good thing… but ultimately is is up to you to create an awesome online presence worthy of long term pagerank and traffic. You can’t buy that anymore like you used to… or at least, its getting harder and harder to buy. Its time to man up and earn it.
@Michael you’re absolutely right. Still, domain buying has other purposes than creating a good foundation for a money site. You can also use strong aged domains for feeder sites, article networks and so forth. I mostly try to buy domains where the name has a strong potential brand or keyword value. I would suggest that if there are people out there buying low quality names with higher SEO value but sitting on them instead of immediately putting them to work supporting their money sites, they’ve probably wasted their money.
Well articulated Nathan. Also, in 2011, reported PR has wildly fluctuated so it’s important not to lose heart if one of your recent aged domain buys has suffered a huge PR drop.
I’ve had PR6s go to PR0 and back again in a month so patience (and best practice on site restoration) is crucial.
That’s right, it’s not an exact science. Kenny was the first I know of to point out how buying a PR0 domain can often (if the backlink profile looks to support it) jump up to a higher PR once the site is reestablished. He calls it his “zero to hero” strategy.
Thanks for the excellent article. My question is, after reading this: does a domain lose pagerank or trust just because of the fact that it’s ownership has changed.
I don’t know the answer to that question, though there are plenty of cases of aged domains gaining fast rankings and fully reclaiming their old PR, even after they change hands.
Having purchased 100s of domains with PR, for the PR side I’d say no. All had their ownership changed, and while we lost some of the PR, and majority remained. If they would lose PR just based on ownership changing I’d assume all would have lost PR (as all changed ownership).
I agree with your article, deleting pages and re-establishing a domain the original content is gone, it takes so long for the Google to crawl all pages it can be very difficult even though you might have sitmaps and robot text installed.
It is very important to build up good keywords, these vary in value for SEO keywords and Adwords keywords for the returned search traffic, value and competition.
Page rank does not mean increase of income. How attractive a site does not mean it will increase traffic. Re establishing a site has to have the right content and design (Call to action) and content placement.
All of the above applies to any deleted/reclaimed site.
Great info! Another thing to consider is that when people “let go” of a domain they will also most likely remove any links they may have had themselves pointing at the pages – especially the valuable ones. Very often that is where the PageRank was coming from – links they were in control of.
Nathan,
Thank you SO much for this information. I had walked away from the idea of buying aged domains because this all seemed so nebulous. Not only am I now in a position to move forward, I now have the ability to speak knowledgeably with my clients!
Great article answering questions that are top of mind for many Internet marketers today.
Great point @Mike Liebner, especially about links to the domain that the previous site owner controls and the likelihood that the previous site owner would remove those links post expiration is high. A lot of times while evaluating domain valuations, it is beneficial to whois the domains of linking sites to make sure there is good diversification and any links controlled by the previous owner are likely to fade over time.
Thanks Nathan for this most excellent post!
Great Article Nathan, Thanks.
My experience is similar to yours and I agree with most of the responses.
PR has often come back for me within a short time of reactivating the domain – PROVIDED – it wasn’t let sit for more than a week. More than a week they struggle to get the PR back and then as you say it is Page Rank so it depends upon the topic I set up the site for. I try to make it the same by researching the previous domain as thoroughly as possible.
I look forward to more posts.
Lordy
(BigLordy)
Excellent article Nathan. Your logic makes perfect sense to me, most people don’t take into account the complexity of google and come to too simple conclusions too soon, still it’s understandable i remember when I first started doing SEO some years ago, when I look back i really was naive haha.
In my experience page rank makes hardly any difference to actual rankings, we had a site go from PR3 to PR0 over night and staid there, it never made any difference to it’s rankings nor traffic
From what i’ve seen the diversity of the links (from lots of different sites) and link text have far more to say in the ranking of the site plus of cause having the kw in the domain name itself. I guess the age goes hand in hand with that last point, but I haven’t really experimented much here.
Great article and something I’ve been wondering about before – especially since seeing caught domains with updated creation dates in their whois records.
Your logic seems sound and thats the best we can do is apply logic and experience when we can never fully know what goes on behind closed doors at Google. The age of the backlink profile makes a lot of sense.
Thanks for sharing this info. I was surprised to learn that it may be possible to refresh the PR and the info on updating the backlinks was very good to learn.
What about changing hosting services? Will that affect PR? If the domain age is retained through transfer.
Great explanation Nathan.
Certainly one for a retweet!
Great article and something I’ve been wondering about before – especially since seeing caught domains with updated creation dates in their whois records.
Well explained!
Thanks for a super article.
I have just started buying aged domains and was wondering what effect a dropped domain would have on the perceived Google age issue and your theory definitely stands up in my book.