In SEO, domain age matters

How much weight does age have in SEO? They say that a site’s age matters in a website’s search engine rankings. How does this work? How long does your site have to be up in the web to be ranked higher by our beloved Google?

I read a forum post in http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=879872 which said:

“Off the bat I am going to say yes as we had 2 x domain names which were both 7 and 3 years old respectively.
The 7 year domain name hadn’t actually been used for webhosting and the 3 year one had been running for the 3 years advertising our products. I fired up the 7 year domain name with exactly the same content as the 3 year. To my surprise the 7 year domain name hopped right over the 3 year in keyword rankings. Basically for every keyword the 7 year got to the 1,2 or 3 page. The 3 year was lagging in all categories.
I stipulate that the 7 year had no backlinks and the only thing done to the site was some SEO for keywords etc. The 3 year site got the same SEO upgdate treatment.
So I would have to say that age plays a big role in keyword ranking.”

Google looks at the domain age just because if you’re up there for a long time, that must probably mean you’re publishing quality content. It only means that your site is up because of a reason and you’re not just any spam sites that go up and then disappear from the radar.

Some claim domain age ain’t that big a factor but for me, I would think that it is. If I were Google, I’d say that time filters out the quality sites – coz if it ain’t quality, it probably won’t last long in the web right? It’s a good filter and I think Google’s using it even if it’s not a colossal factor, it still is – and in SEO, all factors are studied.

If you register your domain for 2-4 years, it would be better than just 1-2 years. Google knows. We can’t really say what works or how much effect something has on your page rank. But if you know it might have an effect, why not go the extra mile? After all, SEO is all about going the long road.