While it’s generally known within the SEO industry, few business owners are aware the amount of years you register your domain name impacts its search engine rankings.
Need to renew soon? Look at it as an opportunity.
The logic is based on the view that most spammy sites are fly-by-night operations. They show up, scam people, and disappear (either by choice or they get knocked of Google’s index). On the other hand, legitimate businesses plan on sticking around for a long time, and register domains accordingly. One of the reasons might be to ensure the domain name doesn’t lapse and become available on the open market.
Rest assured this isn’t a rumour. In fact, it’s documented in patent applications filed by Google. Here are some relevant claims taken directly from the patent #20050071741:
1. A method for scoring a document, comprising: identifying a document; obtaining one or more types of history data associated with the document; and generating a score for the document based on the one or more types of history data.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more types of history data includes information relating to an inception date; and wherein the generating a score includes: determining an inception date corresponding to the document, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on the inception date corresponding to the document.
38. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more types of history data includes domain-related information corresponding to domains associated with documents; and wherein the generating a score includes: analyzing domain-related information corresponding to a domain associated with the document over time, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on a result of the analyzing.
99. Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.
The bottom line is if Google takes the registration period seriously, so should you. The next opportunity you have, register your domain for five or even 10 years, which is currently the max.
While the Google patent application copy wasn’t too inspiring (to say the least), that’s an incredibly valuable piece of information for website owners and marketers! Thanks for sharing!!
Wow…that’s nuts. I’ve been involved with SEO for years and never heard of this. Saying that, it is a lame read! But I’ll go 10 years next time I have the chance…
It does make sense that Google would see more value in a domain that a business owner is prepared to register for a longer period of time.
If you are not prepared to place a vote of faith in your business by registering your domain name for a long period why should anyone else?
I did read somewhere quite a whil;e ago that you did receive a rankings boost by registering your domain name for at least 5 years.
I just wonder what happens as your domain name gets closer to expiry. If you register for say 10 years initially what happens 9 years down the track when you only have 1 year left?