Site Age in Rankings – The New Toolbar PageRank (in a bad way)
No, I don’t mean it’s the new “most important” component of the Google algorithm. I mean it’s the one that probably isn’t that important but causes people to OBSESS. Just like toolbar PageRank has done for years.
As always, this is personal opinion.
In the SEO world—in forums, blogs, tools, etc.—a ranking factor that is coming up more and more is age. And people are saying, almost universally, that older is better, although most confess that freshness is important in tandem (i.e. you should keep adding new content).
If you objectively consider age as a ranking element, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s better or more relevant. In fact, it could just as often be a negative attribute. When I search for Vista reviews, for example, chances are I’m not looking for a review of the first beta. I’m looking for the newest review. Sure, I could use Google news for this, but the results are limited and normal users probably don’t do that. So why would Google put weight on age? The short answer: they don’t.
Then why do all these high profile SEOs talk about it so much? It’s the age old mistake of misinterpreting correlation and causation.
When reviewing high ranking sites, of course it’s going to look like age plays a role—older sites have a head start in link building and virtually every other aspect of SEO. But just because older sites are ranking better it doesn’t mean they are doing so because of their age. Most of the time, they have more natural links, more content, etc.
I frequently hear SEOs blaming poor rankings on a site’s age. They go through their normal quick link building routine, whatever that may be, and then they don’t rank well right off the bat. Looking for something to explain their poor rankings, they say “Oh, well it’s gotta be because my site’s so new.”
It’s an easy mistake to make because it seems to obvious. But it’s wrong. You’re not ranking poorly because your site is new, per say. It’s because your site hasn’t doesn’t have enough—or good enough—links yet. If you create a new site targeting competitive keyword terms, I’m sure you could rank in the top ten very quickly; IF you were able to get links from authority sites that were relevant and natural.
To push an example to an unrealistic extreme, just for sake of argument, consider creating a new site targeting a competitive term like Search Engine Optimization. Most people would say you’re looking at YEARS of ‘age’ before you stand a chance. Well that’s probably true, but ONLY because that’s how long it would take you to get enough link / trust juice. Say this imaginary site were linked to from the Google homepage, Yahoo’s homepage, a good DMOZ category, etc. (multiply that by 1000) in just a few days. I’d be willing to bet that it would rank well in a few weeks.
If you’re thinking the example is totally screwy because this is a pretty much impossible scenario, you’re missing the point. The point is that it’s not about AGE, it’s about links.
I can specifically recall an episode of SEO Rockstars where they have Matt Cutts on as a guest. The guys discuss an experiment they conducted with their nofollow / Link Condom site. To sum up, they try to get Matt to admit the site isn’t ranking well because it’s young—and that their comparison page (on an established blog I believe) that they SEOd for the same term is ranking well because it’s on an older site—but Matt repeatedly denies this charge, surprisingly directly, citing other algorithmic elements (including some on site affiliate links).
Anyway, the main point is that if you sit around waiting for your site to age so it will rank well, you’re making a big mistake. It’s not about age. It’s about links. In my mind, saying a site is ranking well (or even better) strictly because of domain age is like saying a site is ranking well because it has high PR—after all, most sites that rank well do have higher PR, even though we know and accept that PR is not the reason for their rankings.
