Extending your website registration length

[Nerdie]

I have read on various different forums and SEO blogs that extending your registration on your domain could in fact help in your SEO efforts as in google's eyes it will make it look like you are more serious about your website. What are your thoughts on this?

 

[AndroidOS]

I think that it does affect SEO, but at the same time I don't think it should. What I do think it should go on is how old the domain is (i.e. how long it has been registered for) as that is a more true representation of how dedicated you are to the site. For example, I could register a domain for 10 years as it is cheaper than doing it one year at a time, but that does not mean it should rank higher in Google, or any other search engine.

 

[master412160]

I think that it does affect SEO, but at the same time I don't think it should. What I do think it should go on is how old the domain is (i.e. how long it has been registered for) as that is a more true representation of how dedicated you are to the site. For example, I could register a domain for 10 years as it is cheaper than doing it one year at a time, but that does not mean it should rank higher in Google, or any other search engine.

Yeah but is this also true? Or is it better for SEO to register it for 10 years? I never thought about it like this.

 

[Bob Evans]

I think longevity is definitely a factor in determining how well a site ranks. Google seems to love both high content sites and those that have been around a while. Not sure whether simply registering a site continuously over a long period of time without adding content will have any bearing on how well it ranks in SERPs.

 

[Sam]

I have read on various different forums and SEO blogs that extending your registration on your domain could in fact help in your SEO efforts as in google's eyes it will make it look like you are more serious about your website. What are your thoughts on this?

I think it's true yet I probably won't register for more than one year. I expect the majority of projects I do to fail and therefore there is no point registering them for more than 1 year.

 

[Beverly]

How does Google know you have prepaid for one year or ten years for your domain? And, why would it make you any more serious as a webmaster? It doesn't mean you will keep the domain for ten years as you can just as easily sell it after one year to someone else.

 

[GeekStep]

Actually I doubt Google could check every single domain expiration date. The far they can go is to check the age your domain, so registering the domain for indefinite amount of years does not actually matter.

 

[pandaa]

I've heard about this, but I'm unsure if this is just a myth or not. It seems pretty good in theory, but this would be something that would be easy to cheat, so I don't necessarily think Google would factor it in that heavily.

 

[GeekStep]

Yup it would be one of a 'cheating' method. Website owner would just order the domain for 10-30 years or whatnot, and get good ranking.

 

[donald22]

I think google is more interested in how long your site has been registered and how long links have been live, these are things google can check with robots. I doubt if they spend much time looking up the whois but then again only google knows for sure.

 

[spiderman]

I think this is a myth. "Who is look up" would be an additional overhead for search engines.

 

[E07.NET]

Yes, it helps.. Google thinks that you are dedicated to what you are doing..

 

[Nexer]

I think (and heard of) that domain registered for 3 years looks more trustworthy for Google than domain registered for 1 year, so I usually register domains for multiple years.

Here's excerpt from “Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data” Google’s patent I found:

Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. … 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.