My business partner (Mike Stephenson) forwarded me this article. He says “You should urge our clients to buy domains as soon as they can and register them for as long in the future as they can afford to do so!”
Here is why he says that (he emailed me this article):
“As you may have heard, Google filed for a patent that takes
the history of a domain name into consideration, as part of
the ranking algorithm. There’s also a lot more history like
cache data and nameservers taken into consideration.If you’re up for a little “lite reading” you can read the
full patent application here:http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html
(Just do a quick search of the “Published Applications” and search
for 20050071741 to find Google’s recent Patent Application.)”“Two months after the sites went up, Google updated its
PR in the toolbar. The first site, the one with the brand new
domain name, registered for a single year got sandboxed. In
other words, Google came and spidered the pages, but the PR
remains less than zero, greyed out and unranked.The second site also got spidered, but the results on this
one were very different. A PR1 on the home page, a PR5 on
the sitemap, and a PR4 on each of the seven internal pages.Remember, these sites are nearly identical in terms of
content. They are exactly the same in linking structure.The only major difference is the history of the domain name.
How long ago it was registered. And how many years into the
future, it has it been reserved”Full article:
I took two domain names. One was just registered for a
period of a year. The other I had already owned for a year,
but never did anything with it, and just renewed it for
three more years.I set up a small site on each domain. They used the same
hosting company and shared the same IP address. The pages
were simple text only pages, with nothing more than a few
paragraphs on each page. They consist of a home page, a
sitemap page, and seven internal pages.The home page has nofollow links to all the internal pages.
The only static link is the one to the sitemap. The sitemap
has static links to all the internal pages and a nofollow
link back to the home page. All the links leaving the
internal pages have nofollow links.The last thing to do, was to let search engines know about
the new sites, by linking into them. I took two PR4 pages
and linked them to the home pages of the new sites in an
identical manner. Within weeks, all major search engines
discovered and crawled both nine page sites.The experiment was designed to test two things. Would
a new site be sandboxed by Google… or only if it was on a
new domain name? Would two incoming links be sufficient
to start the PR concentration process as shown in the Mastering
PR video?Two months after the sites went up, Google updated its
PR in the toolbar. The first site, the one with the brand new
domain name, registered for a single year got sandboxed. In
other words, Google came and spidered the pages, but the PR
remains less than zero, greyed out and unranked.The second site also got spidered, but the results on this
one were very different. A PR1 on the home page, a PR5 on
the sitemap, and a PR4 on each of the seven internal pages.Remember, these sites are nearly identical in terms of
content. They are exactly the same in linking structure.The only major difference is the history of the domain name.
How long ago it was registered. And how many years into the
future, it has it been reservedAs you may have heard, Google filed for a patent that takes
the history of a domain name into consideration, as part of
the ranking algorithm. There’s also a lot more history like
cache data and nameservers taken into consideration.If you’re up for a little “lite reading” you can read the
full patent application here:http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html
(Just do a quick search of the “Published Applications” and search
for 20050071741 to find Google’s recent Patent Application.)The experiment shows that the sandbox theory appears to be
real. Seems it was a “patent” testing ground for taking the
history of the domain name and applying it as part of the
ranking algo.And as many new webmasters have found, it can take three
months or more, before you get released from the purgatory
known as the Google sandbox and start to appear in the
Google search engine listings.Ok, back to our test results. How did I get such a low PR1
on the home page and manage a staggering PR5 on the sitemap?
Well, PR just means a page is important, not what it’s
important for.To determine what a page is important “for” depends on the
incoming links. And the best way to get a page known for
something, according to Dr. Andy Williams and Jason Potash’s
research, is to write an article and have it spread all over
the internet. But that’s another story.PageRank – or why a page is important – goes way back to the
hubs and authorities ranking system of citation analysis,
that is part of the very foundation of Google.In my test, the sitemap is considered a very important hub,
because it links to seven other pages. It is the only page
on the internet that links to those pages. And the only way
to find this important sitemap is from the home page, thanks
to the way PR is concentrated within the site by using the
nofollow tag.Since the sitemap scored a PR5, at least PR4 gets passed
along to each of the internal pages. So why the lowly PR1 on
the home page? Well… that’s my fault.In my zest to get the experiment completed, I forgot to make
normal static links back to the home page from each internal
page. I accidentally left all links on my internal pages as
nofollow links. What I should have done is completed a PR
feedback loop with the seven PR4 internal pages, linking
back to the home page with static links.Even though I’ve made the changes, it will take another
three months before the PR gets updated in the Google
Toolbar. So we’ll have to wait and see.To conclude this little experiment, yes… a decent PR can
be attained in 10 pages or less. Does it help you rank
better in the SERPs (search engine results pages) … yes.
But it is only one piece of the ranking formula.You still need incoming links. The incoming links must build
a reputation for what your page is about. The PR is added as
a matter of page importance. And finally, as my research is
beginning to show, the age and history of your domain name
will be taken into consideration as well.So if you plan on creating a new site for yourself or
clients, you may consider building on a domain name that’s
been kicking around for a while. Then on top of that, go and
register it for a least three more years, to show that you
are indeed serious about owning it and hanging on to it.The amount of time you spend in the sandbox, your PR and
position in the SERPs may depend on it.