I like 'em old.
Posted Thursday, September 15th, 2005. Filed under Google, Internet Marketing Tips, Link Building.
When leads come in, I review them and often attach a small note like "since 1999" or "since 1997" to Todd — not the PageRank or link count, but the year, which means the most to me.
Looking at the top 10 sites in Google for "blue widgets," I found sites registered from 1993 to 2003, averaging around 6 years old, with the newest being just over 2 years old and already showing hundreds of thousands of backlinks. Trying to rank a site registered in 2005 for a competitive phrase can be done, but it will probably take a few years of hard work creating content and gathering links.
New sites need time for rankings. In 98% of cases, you won't see competitive rankings for what I believe is 6 months to a year and a half, and if your site is less than a year old, chances are you'll see almost no traffic from Google no matter what you do. The age of a website along with the age of its backlinks plays a large role in rankings — trusted authority sites don't spring up overnight; they come with age and years of constant new links.
To find a domain's registration date, use whois.sc or Network Solutions. For a more accurate sense of a site's "birth," check the Wayback Machine, since if the Internet Archive found your site back then, Google probably did too. Older sites have the advantage of gaining links within a community over years; the key is links over time.
Reader Comments
randfish: Jim, I did a similar survey of 10 search terms and the top 10 ranking sites and found the same thing — average age was 1999 for 100 sites. I need to read this blog more regularly, you've got great stuff here.
kservik: I am working with a client in travel whose site is 6 months old. My advice so far is to buy an on-topic domain, since the budget is too low to develop their current one. Totally agreed, Rand, this blog is really worth reading.
Jason: Great piece, but a small typo in the linkdomain URL — you have a double http in there.
