Is domain age no longer a factor?

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Most of you have already seen the Matt Cutts video saying that domain age is insignificant after a few months. Do people agree with that? I have a friend who has a domain that is over 12 years old, but the name is not great. gaport.com for a business that sells primarily carports and garages. After watching this video, he wants to rebrand his site with a new name and scrap the old domain for something more marketable. Before he does this, I'd like to know if domain age really isn't a factor anymore?

Thanks,

Ruben

[LalitP]

“Overall Domain, age does play a role, but a small role & it’s not a very strong ranking factor as compared to others.

The main Problem associated with buying Old Domains is you have to find out with what it was associated before?

Even best SEO Experts have failed to get a spam free domain in one go

Because domains that get Expired might have been used in past for the purposes of Gambling, Spamming, Illegal Content, Adult Websites etc.

We have written a post in detail on this topic, whether Domain Age is an SEO Factor or not?

Do check it out & give us your valuable insights.

[link removed by admin]

[nurzhyk]

if we talk about a domain by itself it is not a privilage to have an old one. Your domain is listed in dmoz and yahoo directories and has more other backlinks. And those backlinks are more valuable then the exact age.

[EGOL]

Although domain name age might not be important, other aspects of a mature domain could give support to rankings.

I redirected a domain that held #1 rankings for a commercial keyword unchallenged for ten consecutive years.  This was a domain, popular in its niche, that was getting over 500,000 pageviews per month.

Changing the domain resulted in the loss of over 1000 people per month arriving at the site through domain queries typed into the google search box, lots of direct visitors from the domain typed in browser address bar, probably lots of people clicking its entries in the SERPs because of domain recognition, loss of huge sitelinks.

Once you switch the domain all of that tribe support - measurable by Google - disappears.  BAM!

After 301 redirecting the site dropped immediately in the SERPs, recovered quickly to #2 and then retook #1 after domain queries were back up over 1000 per month. - but that took many months and lots of lost sales for the former level of tribe support to reestablish on the new domain.

It currently is at #3 with a couple big brands above it.  Revenue is down.

I can't say if it would still be holding off those big brands - because Google seems to be giving them strong favor these days - but if I could go back a couple years, I might not have changed the domain.

[customerparadigm.com]

Ruben -

It sounds like the consensus of the coverage on Matt Cutt's statements show that:

• Google still uses domain name age as a factor, but it sounds like it's not nearly as important as unique, high-quality content, and other trust signals such as external links.
• Google does pay attention to domain name age, especially during the first 2-3 months of a domain's lifetime.

I still think domain name age is a factor for how pages rank, as Google still does like pages that "have withstood the test of time."  (Google also likes fresh new content, too.)

My hunch is that your friend would take a short-term hit on traffic, and in order to get the site to rank well, the site will need to focus on a high-quality user experience, great content, etc.

I could perhaps see an interesting section on the site devoted to the best (or worst) garages and carports.