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Longer Domain Registration Can Increase Search Engine Listings
Google recently filed United States Patent Application 20050071741. As part of that patent application, Google made apparent its efforts to wipe out search engine spam.

Entire article here:
http://www.visionefx.net/articles/Longer-Domain-Registration-Can-Increase-Search-Engine-Listings.htm

Rick,
That's very interesting..... I didn't know that that was a factor in google's ranking algorith, however, it does make sense not only for preventing and wiping out search engine spam, but also seeing who's committed to their site so to speak, and how important a value the person places on their content. I WIll DEFINTEL look that patent up. That's just another reason to register a domain for longer. Interestingly enough, a domain I registered for 4 yrs versus 1 got listed 400% faster (although i did help it along with sitemaps and google analytics whichI suspect makes google think that I am likely to do adwords so they'll crawl my site).

I wonder if it will benefit you the opposite way, like how long the domain has been registered. The longer the domain has been around, the more reputable it is?

That's true already... Because google has had longer to index your site, and I think it already does thatm but registering a domain for longer gurantees that google won't crawl your website and find it gone, or parked with ads... Its staying power in a VERY competitive industry.

I think that it is misleading heuristics. It discriminates new but legitimate wesites. Since it is not clear if the new website is going to succeed people typically register them for a relatively short period of time.

It would also weight against domains that can't be registered for long periods of time, like .co.uk which has a limit of 2 years.

On a side note I once saw a domain that NetSol had registered that should a "Registered" date of Jan. 1st, 1900. This was around the Y2K switchover, which likely had something to do with that. It must have had the BEST optimization since it's length of term was over 100 years.