Age Of Url - What Does This Really Mean?, When is a URL "Born?" At Purchase or Site Launch? Options

[njoynlife]

I know this must be a really dumb question, but I want to clarify this for a client, and can't seem to find the exact answer to their question. I would think the "age of a URL" is defined as when it was launched live on the Internet. Another cohort thinks it's when the URL was purchased. Both sort of make sense, but I would think "age" comes with "experience &trust" and thus URL aging begins when it is "born" live online.

Thoughts? Theories? Definitive answer? Thanks loads,
njoy your day~

[Jill]

For search engine purposes, I would suppose that it would be the age that the search engine first finds a link to the URL.

[Shannon Lilly]

The age of the URL would be the registration date I believe (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Jarret]

I think I am going to have to go with Jill on this one as I just recently started working on a site that has been sitting dormant for about 8 months.

According to some, I should be out of the sandbox and should be doing fine. But since I have not worked on the site and just started earlier this month, I have not seen any placement whatsoever in the search engines. I have enough posts indexed that at least something should be showing up.

Although at the same time, I did do a little bit with the site when I first purchased it....enough that Google had pages indexed. So I am also thinking that Google may recognize it not exactly when it first found it but when it you first start regularly posting content. How often I am not sure, it is too soon to tell.

[Shannon Lilly]

I thought for sure that that you can skip the sandbox if your careful right?

[chrishirst]

I know this must be a really dumb question, but I want to clarify this for a client, and can't seem to find the exact answer to their question. I would think the "age of a URL" is defined as when it was launched live on the Internet. Another cohort thinks it's when the URL was purchased. Both sort of make sense, but I would think "age" comes with "experience &trust" and thus URL aging begins when it is "born" live online.

Thoughts? Theories? Definitive answer? Thanks loads,
njoy your day~

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.ph...mp;#entry285212

but I would think "age" comes with "experience &trust"

Not "age" but longevity maybe

The age of the URL would be the registration date I believe (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I have a domain name I have owned since 1997, it has never been online in those 11 years. So by your idea it should be instantly given 11 years of "trust" from the first moment it goes live.

[kynduvme]

Im not convinced yet that "domain age" affects your rankings. You do not get special points just by virtue of when the site was registered. That never made sense to me

[Randy]

I think you probably have a good point, though it may be how one defines terms.

I've always thought about it as being more a Domain History type of thing than simply a Domain Age type of thing. Meaning the more consistently good history a domain has with a certain search engine --based upon when it was first found and not when it was first registered-- the more it is trusted.

On the flip side, if a brand new domain got caught doing something shady and removed the shadiness, it might stand a better chance of staging a comeback than would a domain that had been caught doing shady things over and over again. Even if the domain with some age on it, and years worth of history, always corrected the shady stuff after being caught. Because of its history of shadiness the older domain could end up with a severe lack of trust.

[Jill]

Im not convinced yet that "domain age" affects your rankings. You do not get special points just by virtue of when the site was registered. That never made sense to me

Domain age alone, no. Site age + domain, yes.

And even URL age seems to have an effect.

[arlen]

If Google's aging delay is the concern, I am firmly in the camp that it's from the date your site was first indexed. My site had a holding page in place for 2 years before I launched, and it took me 12 months and 10 days to emerge from the effects of the delay ... i.e. I jumped from page 50 something to page 4 or 5 for a wide array of search phrases / terms.

They don't care when you registered it. Even if they had spidered my holding page at some point, that didn't count for anything. No significant changes were made that prompted this change in the SERPS, I just happened to launch right about the time the aging delay was instituted.

[mcanerin]

To a search engine, a URL exists from the point that the search engine discovers it - how could it be anything else?

There is a difference in URLs between absolute age (the age where the URL is able to respond to a browser request), published age (the age where a URL is available to the public and not just on a development server somewhere or hidden behind a robots.txt) and an indexed age (the age from which a particular search engine became aware of the URL).

Ian

[kynduvme]

Does Matt Cutts mention this at all in his blog?

[mcanerin]

I'm not sure I follow you. I've had a number of conversations with Matt, usually while sitting in the audience and making light fun of the speakers onstage saying "Matt Cutts says..." every 10 seconds. He thinks it's as funny as I do.

It's well and good to pay attention to his blog, but it certainly isn't the be all and end all of Google information, and means nothing to other search engines at all. FTR, I think I remember him saying something to the effect of the aging delay starts when Google first visits a site, not when the site is launched, but it was as GoogleGuy and it was in the Search Engine Watch Forum.

Not that it matters. Unless you know of a magical method by which Google knows about everything on the web the instant it exists, it's clear that it would have to logically visit a page before it could index it. I also know of an experiment by a colleague where he set the reported creation date of a bunch of his pages back to see the ranking effect, and to see if he could get out of the aging delay early, but it didn't work. Google insisted on using the indexing date, presumably since it can't be manipulated by spammers, unlike the reported date.

Additionally, I've tested it insofar as a series of experiements on avoiding the aging delay, and additionally I have data from numerous clients that support that identical pages found at different times will rank differently.

Finally, you might want to read Google's Temporal Data Patent (which lists Matt Cutts as one of the inventors).

[0036] According to one implementation, the inception date of a document may be determined from the date that search engine 125 first learns of or indexes the document. Search engine 125 may discover the document through crawling, submission of the document (or a representation/summary thereof) to search engine 125 from an "outside" source, a combination of crawl or submission-based indexing techniques, or in other ways. Alternatively, the inception date of a document may be determined from the date that search engine 125 first discovers a link to the document.

Source: http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser...=DN/20050071741

Ian

This post has been edited by mcanerin: Oct 10 2008, 08:36 PM

[Jill]

Does Matt Cutts mention this at all in his blog?

Why? You don't believe us? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/searchme.gif)

Honestly, you'd be much smarter to listen to smart SEOs who've been around for awhile than to Google's propaganda machine (in many cases). They sometimes tell it like it is, but they have their own agenda which is very often different than ours.

[BBCoach]

I agree with those that say the aging begins upon the crawls. However, since I use GoDaddy I believe I read a press release stating some kind of partnership with G. It wouldn't surprise me if they share some domain info. Perhaps some kind of "new" domain registration listing to give G a heads up on fresh new content. Even so, how can a site be aged, indexed and cataloged just by the registration date? It can't. G doesn't have a clue what your new website is about or if it's a trustworthy site without crawling it. SEs are not in the business of letting us know there's a new domain out there. Their business is organizing the world's information for us to find the most relevant websites matching our searched terms. Also, my opinion, once a site is live for a year or two ageing is nothing to be concerned about. Better focus on getting inbound links pointing to that great content.