What are Old domains worth?

[DomainMagnate]

Lets see some opinions on old domains, by old i mean specifically

1. 10 years old
2. 11 years old
3. 12 years old


What do you think those would be worth (minimum resale price) and what are the benefits of buying an old domain?

 

[Creature]

It depends on the names. Can you list them?

 

[DomainMagnate]

(minimum resale price)

so assume nothing special, just some average 10-15 letters domains with not much value for the name itself

 

[fatter]

age only helps in resale when the domain has inherent value,(some help with seo placement) a crappy domain 10 years ago would still be a crappy domain today

 

[DomainingCom]

I said to my friend that repeated to his friend which himself repeated to his friend...
This is the sumary of the "age of domain" buzz.

I explain:

There was a SEO theory saying a new domain cannot get good rankings or allways get worst ranking then the same site with an older domain.
When the first company that sell domain appraisal hear about this theory then they started to use the age of a domain as a parameter to consider in the appraisal.
It was of interest, domain appraisal are generally short so if we can add few more parameters they look likes more serious and the appraisal buyer get more for his money.
The first big appraiser (guess his name) started and the other as natural copied.
And today people do not even know if the age of a domain is important and why but assume it's a parameter to consider.

You know the story!

Now for the SEO, that's true new domain are generally put in a sand box but this rarely exceed one year, this mean that any domain older than 1 year have the same value a domain older 5 years for SEO.
By the way for SEO, what also counts is when the domain should expire:
This year, within 2 years, ...
More you paid for years more SE assume it's a legitimate domain used by a company and not a tempory site.


...

 

[DomainMagnate]

Well it's not a theory, google does give quite a lot of weight to age of the domain, it also depends on old links and cache etc.
It's not just the "sandbox" or similar stuff that likely prevents new domains from ranking well, it's more like part of the general google algo that gives more trust to aged domains, considering them as more valuable, along with other factors of course (as far as it's believed to be in the SEO community)

But I'm wondering if there could be any other benefits in owning old domains and what you think would 10-12 years old domain be worth. Not completely crappy domains, but not too good names either..

 

[Biggie]

Well it's not a theory, google does give quite a lot of weight to age of the domain, it also depends on old links and cache etc.
It's not just the "sandbox" or similar stuff that likely prevents new domains from ranking well, it's more like part of the general google algo that gives more trust to aged domains, considering them as more valuable, along with other factors of course (as far as it's believed to be in the SEO community)

But I'm wondering if there could be any other benefits in owning old domains and what you think would 10-12 years old domain be worth. Not completely crappy domains, but not too good names either..

hi

are you assuming/asserting that an algo can give value to an ip, or just quoting from a 'seo com'?


imo

there are no benefits to owning an old domain, unless it has inherent value.

other than that it's just some old junk where a few domainers are using the "age" card to make a sale.

the age of a domain is not a factor for me when buying, and adding it to the title of your thread or ad won't draw special attention.

it's always the name itself or the money it makes... that's the draw.

but some people like old domains, just as much as they like those old clothes still hanging in their closets!

imo...

 

[DomainMagnate]

hi

are you assuming/asserting that an algo can give value to an ip, or just quoting from a 'seo com'?


imo

there are no benefits to owning an old domain, unless it has inherent value.

other than that it's just some old junk where a few domainers are using the "age" card to make a sale.

the age of a domain is not a factor for me when buying, and adding it to the title of your thread or ad won't draw special attention.

it's always the name itself or the money it makes... that's the draw.

but some people like old domains, just as much as they like those old clothes still hanging in their closets!

imo...

Hi,

What I previously posted about age is based on my own experience and other seo experts' opinions and no.. I wouldn't quote any crappy seo blog, seo is what I do and i do my own experiments to see how things (google) work
But don't take it as any old domain would outrank new one

I didn't mention anything about ip, not sure what you mean there..

thanks for your input

 

[dcristo]

By the way for SEO, what also counts is when the domain should expire:
This year, within 2 years, ...
More you paid for years more SE assume it's a legitimate domain used by a company and not a tempory site.

That's just heresay actually and I haven't found it to be true at all. Just an attempt maybe to spend more with the domain registrars, who knows.

 

[DomainingCom]

Probably the same heresay that exists with the domain age!

Nobody know the Google rank algorythm, these are buzz coming from the SEO industry.

 

[GAMEFINEST]

To me it doesnt matter if the domain itself is 15 years old if it doesnt mean anything, it wont hold much value IMO

 

[BostonDomainer]

Probably the same heresay that exists with the domain age!

Nobody know the Google rank algorythm, these are buzz coming from the SEO industry.

Unfortunately you're wrong on this Francoise. If you read Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page's paper on the protype Google that they presented to the Computer Science Department at at Stanford- you'll come extremely close to knowing how google functions for SEO purposes. Add that with one's personal experiance with seo and you will come very close to how today's google works. The paper is a very very long read (and that's just the short version) but I do recommend it to any serious about true "non-myth" seo work. There is also a longer more detailed version of that paper which I won't bother reading.

 

[BostonDomainer]

....

 

[zangief]

I have made the same test like Michael_Goldman for some competitive keywords there is a time filter.
I made two similar sites on the same subject , for the new domain I have twice the backlinks then the old one.But the old ranks on the 5th place (came to this place on the first month) where the new one ranks no where.Not even the first 50.

This is my test but for google the algoritm is unknown cause there are a lot of factors and age is one factor but a strong factor and will be stronger when time passes with age of backlinks.Cause who will you rank for a keyword a long term company(or site) or a newcomer.

Age does matter

 

[hugegrowth]

I don't know why but there are people who do wanted posts for 'old' domains, like at least 2 years old, or prior to 2000, etc.

 

[andrejc]

And what about domain that was first regged 10+ years ago and then dropped? Does it still have good SEO value?

 

[DomainingCom]

I think that NO if SE spiders revisited the site and detected the domain is no longer taken then the SE reset all the links to this domain to ZERO.
So if dropped for +6 months probably it lost his SEO value.
Here again, nobody really knows the SE indexing/ranking secrets...
And each SE must have his specificities.
Only logical supositions.

 

[VirtualT]

And what about domain that was first regged 10+ years ago and then dropped? Does it still have good SEO value?

well if it still has good backlinks, and/or has managed to hold its page rank I would say yes

 

[stuff]

its easy to defend older domains WIPO-s. They can`t prove bad faith if the domain is registered before trademark

 

[VirtualT]

its easy to defend older domains WIPO-s. They can`t prove bad faith if the domain is registered before trademark

no its not, they take the registration date as the date that the current owner acquired the domain (i.e is now the current registrant) as the "registration date" as such AFAIK