Domain age

[bensd]

I would pay a bit more for a domain with age.

199? Reg is cool...

 

[thecat]

Obsessive SEO guys maybe but bricks and mortar businesses never a murmur. If your in the drop catching business as I am you'll always have "new domains" that doesn't make them less valuable. If it's brought up, there's the exit.

And that raises an interesting question, who buys the domains from domainers?
Domainers
Traditional Business looking for channel shift
Business looking for competitive advantage online
Other marketing reasons

Seo affects two of those, and if you do seo you should be obsessive.

 

[domsaleuk]

Yes - ultimately it is likely to be “end users” – i.e. businesses of some description or another that buy domains from domainers (albeit you may have sales in the middle from domainer to domainer) .The reasons that end users will eventually buy will revolve around a few things in my view– but particularly development and marketing/ promotion - both of which are heavily influenced by SEO.

It is the strengths that a domain name holds for an end user that is where I think the true value of domains is and whilst I have many domains that are not aged - I would still class age as something that adds to the overall “end user” value. As such if two of the names I was selling were sat side by side and had similar qualities in terms of other things such as generic term, exact, phrase or broad match searches (another interesting discussion point) and number of words, length of characters, hyphen or non hyphen (yet another discussion point) - then I would assign more value to the aged domain each and every time.

That said - firstly the strength of domains is not yet widely understood within the business community and secondly the comment that Foz made on the fact that business owners do not take notice of age is right I think to some extent as unless the benefits are pointed out to them, smaller businesses in particular will probably not be aware of this. However when things take off in terms of mass take up by end users of the secondary domain market, there will I assume by this point be much more awareness of the key domain attributes and thus I think age will come into play here. How long down the line this is however, nobody knows ...

 

[Murray]

I would still class age as something that adds to the overall “end user” value.

Domain age is nothing more than a number, it has no benefit to anything, It adds no value other than what you imagine in your head it does.

I don't see why you would need to use it as a misleading selling tactic, they're your domains & you can ask for whatever you want, you don't really need to justify to anyone as to why it's worth that amount, they're either want to buy it for that price of they don't.

 

[Nova]

Domain age is nothing more than a number, it has no benefit to anything, It adds no value other than what you imagine in your head it does.

I don't see why you would need to use it as a misleading selling tactic, they're your domains & you can ask for whatever you want, you don't really need to justify to anyone as to why it's worth that amount, they're either want to buy it for that price of they don't.

That may be the case, but history has always proven that people are always keener to shell out their money on a "good deal". To make a deal seem good you have to list the positives and make it seem like you are selling them something extra compared to what they can buy elsewhere. I wouldn't always believe what Matt Cutts says as G hate SEO and the last thing they want us you to know exactly his their algarythm works. Having said that I don't know how much if any a domain names age helps nowadays.

 

[thecat]

So we have one set of domainers saying age is irrelevant.
One set of seo people saying age is irrelevant.
One set of seo peopke saying it is relevant, all be it minor.
And finally people who will add the perception of value to a domain by specifying its age.

Interesting mix.

 

[domsaleuk]

Domain age is nothing more than a number, it has no benefit to anything, It adds no value other than what you imagine in your head it does.

I don't see why you would need to use it as a misleading selling tactic, they're your domains & you can ask for whatever you want, you don't really need to justify to anyone as to why it's worth that amount, they're either want to buy it for that price of they don't.

I do not believe your point that age is nothing than a number to be true with domains. I will go back to one of my opening points where I said I think that age has value in development only if all the other areas of SEO are done correctly. I am not disputing the fact that there are other things that add value to domains such as backlinks, page rank and all sorts of things - and I agree that with sites that have been around a long time, it is often a whole load of things together that add to their power and not just the age of the domain. I also think if an aged domain is developed poorly and put up against a newer domain that is developed well from an SEO perspective that the new domain will probably do better in this scenario. In addition I think put an aged domain against a newer page rank domain with backlinks and the newer one will probably be the leader again...to begin with until the aged one catches up with page rank, links etc

However my view is that if an aged domain is put on the starting blocks against a much younger domain (and all other attributes are equal including the quality of SEO) that the aged domain will do much better. You can disagree if you like but I simply go on everything I have read and seen over a decade of being involved in SEO.

Therefore when I talk of end user value and utilising age as a benefit in a sale it is because I believe it, and not because it is some sort of misleading sales tactic as was suggested.

 

[Nova]

I guess it all boils down to what individuals believe but as long as a seller isn't asking an astronomical amount purely on a domains age, I would be happy to buy a domain for a very small premium if it was aged and clean. If you do believe "Matt Cutts says while it does make a slight difference, especially if measured against a new site, after a matter of months this is almost irrelevant." I personally would like to get a couple of months head start.

 

[Blossom]

As a (very atypical) end user, if I saw a domain being pushed with 'aged' as one of the selling points, at best I'd think it was irrelevant.

However my view is that if an aged domain is put on the starting blocks against a much younger domain (and all other attributes are equal including the quality of SEO) that the aged domain will do much better. You can disagree if you like but I simply go on everything I have read and seen over a decade of being involved in SEO.

Therefore when I talk of end user value and utilising age as a benefit in a sale it is because I believe it, and not because it is some sort of misleading sales tactic as was suggested.

I respectfully disagree. There is no reason to value a domain higher purely on the basis it has been registered longer. If anything, it's a disadvantage because it's been sitting there providing zero value to anybody. The last thing anyone wants is a web that consists of insane numbers of undeveloped domains. And that's especially true from Google's perspective - they want people creating websites to buy Adwords for and place Adsense on and to provide good search results. People registering domains and leaving them doing nothing has absolutely no benefit to them.

If the aged domain has backlinks and history, that's a different story.

 

[Blossom]

If you do believe "Matt Cutts says while it does make a slight difference, especially if measured against a new site, after a matter of months this is almost irrelevant." I personally would like to get a couple of months head start.

Is there any point in a head start if the other car is level pegging with you after a couple of miles?

 

[stellar73]

I think the only thing you can extrapolate from a domain with an age of say, 12 years or more, is that there is a higher chance the name itself will appeal to more people (so will be considered subjectively of greater quality) than a domain first registered only a year or two ago.

This is simply on the basis that the greater availability of 'obvious' quality names back then would lead most people (even clueless ones) to register a better quality of name than the 'compromise' solutions people often have to resort to if they hand register now.

Obviously there will still have been some terrible names registered 12 years ago and equally there may be a few gems registered for the first time today but I think this applies when speaking in very broad terms.

 

[mozzeratti]

I think the only thing you can extrapolate from a domain with an age of say, 12 years or more, is that there is a higher chance the name itself will appeal to more people (so will be considered subjectively of greater quality) than a domain first registered only a year or two ago.

This is simply on the basis that the greater availability of 'obvious' quality names back then would lead most people (even clueless ones) to register a better quality of name than the 'compromise' solutions people often have to resort to if they hand register now.

Obviously there will still have been some terrible names registered 12 years ago and equally there may be a few gems registered for the first time today but I think this applies when speaking in very broad terms.

I agree with the above sentiment.
A question: when you say the name was "first regged in 1999", are you implying that it has since been re-registered (as in, dropped)?

If so, I would argue the applicable figure would be the age since its most recent registration. I bring this up because there has been a tendency towards quoting the oldest registration they can find in the domain history (the Way Back Machine seems to be mentioned often).