Search Engine Ranking Factors

Age of Website / Domain

Older websites, all other things being equal, will usually outrank younger sites. As late as 2004, it was perfectly possible to buy hundreds of brand new, "throwaway" domains, interlink them in a clever way, and generate massive traffic. This is no longer the case. In March of 2004, Google introduced its infamous "Sandbox" filter, which seemed to prevent new websites from ranking well on competitive terms. Not all webmasters agree that the Sandbox filter actually exists (Google has denied it), but it is true that an older website will always have a ranking advantage over new sites in organic search engine traffic.

Although search engines originally gave extra value to older domains in an attempt to reduce spam, additional justification came in the form of the TrustRank algorithm, which was developed around the same time. The assumption is that older websites are more likely to be legitimate, and represent a much bigger investment for their owners, so they would tend to act in a way that would protect their investment (by not spamming and running the risk of a ban). Because the dominant spamming technique at the time was to use throwaway domains (discarded after each rankings update after they were inevitably banned), simply applying a rankings penalty to new domains was enough to bring that era of search engine spamming to a close.

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