Is it Better to Optimise a New or Old Domain?

Whilst during a more relaxed moment of web browsing earlier this morning (insomniacs anon) I was reading some old patent applications from Google, and it reminded me of a conversation about domains and links that I had at length with a client recently.

The patent, from March 2005, effectively discusses the prospect of a site being in existence for many years compared with a recent site and how the more recent site rapidly grows in link popularity.

Consider the example of a document with an inception date of yesterday that is referenced by 10 back links. This document may be scored higher by the search engine than a document with an inception date of 10 years ago that is referenced by 100 back links because the rate of link growth for the former is relatively higher than the latter.

While a spiky rate of growth in the number of back links may be a factor used by the search engine to score documents, it may also signal an attempt to spam the search engine. Accordingly, in this situation, the search engine may actually lower the score of a document(s) to reduce the effect of spamming...

So a new domain that grows links quickly may find it is caught by a filter specifically created to identify spam techniques....otherwise known as the Sandbox. The document goes on to say:-

Thus, according to an implementation consistent with the principles of the invention, the search engine may use the inception date of a document to determine a rate at which links to the document are created (e.g., as an average per unit time based on the number of links created since the inception date or some window in that period). This rate can then be used to score the document, for example, giving more weight to documents to which links are generated more often....

In one implementation, the search engine may modify the link-based score of a document as follows:

H=L/log(F+2),

H refers to the history-adjusted link score,

L refers to the link score

F refers to elapsed time measured from the inception date associated with the document

so if a site that is 10 years old (3650 days) with 100 back links then

H=3650/log(100+2)
H = 1817.2

if a site 1 week old (7 days) with 500 backlinks then

H=7/log(500+2)
H = 2.59

So it is plain to see that new domains can be a real problem, better to keep that domain you bought years ago and make use of it than to buy a new domain just because you thought you needed an image refresh.

M.P