10 replies to this topic

[Scottie]

This is not proof by any means, but to people who are thinking of buying old domains because they are "aged" and either building new content on them or redirecting them... I don't think it's worth the effort.

In the past 6 months I've purchased 2 industry-related domains where the owners had gone out of business. One was unused for about 2 months, the other one had been unused for 9 months.

These were actually sites I had created the designs for many moons ago, so I pulled out my old files and used the same general design templates, changing colors and the logos and adding resource content pages. One still had a link in DMOZ, the other had links on prominent industry sites.

Both are still being filtered and not showing well. I have gotten additional links to both of them. I imagine they will do better in another 6 months or so, and rankings isn't really the reason I bought them- I'm using them for a different angle that compliments existing websites I have so it was worth the domain/hosting/work that it took to set them up.

But if I had only bought them for rankings or an aging delay bypass, I'd be out of luck. My guess is that once they expire, G (using their registrar data) sets their aging back to 0. Just my best guess!

If you transfer ownership without the domain ever expiring, it probably doesn't affect anything.

[Jill]

Good info, thanks, Scottie!

[Katja]

Hi!

I bought my domain not even thinking that someone might have had it before and didn´t even check. After a while I checked age of it to see when I have to pay for domain and was little shocked when I saw 6 years and 3 months.

I checked with wayback machine and found parts of an old site. Anyway you are totaly right that after being unused (could be that owner changes too) everything starts again.

It would be great to have 6 years old domain.

Bye, Katja

[Shane]

Scottie, how similar was the content? I know that we had seen domains resetting if the content was appreciably different, but I never thought about what happened if they had expired.

[Martin C]

I recall many months ago Matt Cutts in an interview say that if there was a change of ownership on a domain and the domain content remained substantially the same then there would be no change to the ageing. However, if the change of ownership also resulted in a significant change of content, i.e. in terms of business, then the ageing process would be reset.

In theory this would mean that where a business is taken over by another as a going concern there should not be a problem with any loss of ranking.

Now what Matt Cutts says publicly on how Google might like to look at things, and how Google actually look at things, using either an automated or human process, is anyones guess, but they do have the necessary technology pieces in place.

I think the interview might have been this one Matt Cutts with Danny Sullivan May 2006

But I haven't listened to check that it was.

[OldWelshGuy]

I can report that we had a horrid experience recently.

A domain changed ownership, it changed servers, the content was changed, in as much as the text was more or less the same, the site was simply redesigned, and updated.

The site immediately went into the Supplementary index, and all the backlinks were wiped out, it got a PR0.

The site was flawless, it was w3c compliant, user friendly etc (obviously seeing as we designed it) the server is top drawer response times are lightening. It is now 3 months later before the pages have come out of the SI, and some of them are still in it.

My gut is telling me that the pages were placed in the SI because there were no known backlinks (those previously known being wiped out).

The second site we worked on (where the ownership did not change as it was already registered to the correct person), we redesigned, and it is not ranked #2 on Google.com for its main golfing instruction phrase!

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that changing ownership, server, and content cn result in a change of status in the eyes of Google. This to me is VERY poor, as this client has now suffered because his old design company registered the domain in THEIR name rather than his!

[MaKa]

So how long should one need to wait if both the ownership and server are going to change? I mean, you could first change one of them, say the server, wait a while to avoid any ageing delays and then change the content. (or the other way around).

Anyone any insight into how long you'd have to wait? and whether this (might) work?

[fixed typo]

Edited by MaKa, 19 October 2006 - 11:24 AM.

[Bernard]

I don't think changing the hosting server has any part of it. It's all about the domain registration / contact details.

My bad experience took ~6 months to fully resolve.

[OldWelshGuy]

I would disagre about the change of IP. Google uses many elements, and it stands to reason that if Ownership changes, but Ip remains constant, then it shows a higher % of continuity. ownership and Ip = less, with ownership, IP AND content changes, = less again.

[Bernard]

I kept my site on the same host when I updated some contact details on the registration and Google smacked me.

[OldWelshGuy]

Sorry, I thought you were saying that moving the site would not cause a problem. I got hold of the wrong end of the stick I agree, as I posted above. any single or combination of the elements can affect how google reacts.