This week I’ve given thought as to how Google determines domain age. I recently picked up a dropped domain that has previously been registered since 2007. I was feeling quite chuffed with picking up an aged domain, but then I give it some thought as to how Google would determine the age of a domain and perhaps my acquisition wasn’t as good as it first seems.

Market Samurai, a SEO tool has a feature entitled ‘SEO competition’. It essentially collects data for a variety of on page and off page factors allowing one to quickly assess how easy it is to target a niche. One of the factors it collects data for is domain age. Market Samurai uses the earliest record in archive.org to suggest how old a domain is.

There is a fundamental problem with this method of analysing domain age since a site may have been active on the domain years and years ago, but then dropped. It may have been available for 2/3 years before someone bought it up. This method of determining domain age doesn’t work since the above person would in theory have a vintage domain.

Therefore it can almost definitely be assumed that domain age is determined through Google’s access to ICANN records. This makes me sad