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After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does google use the wayback machine to determine the age of a site?
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I have a site that I had removed from the wayback machine because I didn't want old versions to show. However I noticed that in many seo tools the site now always shows a domain age of zero instead of 6 years ago when I registered it.
My question is what do the actual search engines use to determine age when they factor it into the ranking algorithm? By having it removed from the wayback machine, does that make the search engines think the site is brand new?
Thanks
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hopefully that is correct. I would hate to get knocked down just because I took myself out of the wayback machine. I have had the domain registered in my name since 2006 so I should be ok then.
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Google uses WHOIS to determine the age of the domain under a current ownership, however if the WHOIS data changes and at the same time the content of the site changes dramatically, Google may reset the domain age of the site in their opinion.
I'm not sure but I would imagine Google have their own records on domain age outside of WHOIS registration.
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Using Wayback would be strange.It's just a quick WHOIS lookup to determine age.
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