: Does a longer registration length/period for a domain name improve its SEO and search ranking? While I was renewing a domain of mine with a well-known domain registrar, the support person who

@Sarah324

Matt Cutt was asked this question at 2009, we are now in 2016.
This question is now 7 years old. I think that Google has changed their algorithm at least 5 times in that period.

Domain registration length is no longer a major factor. If the competition is so close, I think it could be the deciding factor.

If you ask me, I'd say that domain age is a much more important factor.

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@Angela700

This is a big concern since I have registered my domains at 1&1 - they will ONLY register for one year and simply offer auto renew. There is NO way to register for more than one year.

Matt Cutt's response is almost an attempt to be politically correct and if I read his words precisely then he is saying that it does indeed matter


My short answer is not to worry about that very much. Not very much at all, in fact.


For businesses that are in gear to do their BEST even this one point cannot be ignored. Domains should be registered for multiple year periods.

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@Steve110

Yes it could matter. Google's lot of energy goes into finding spam sites. And most of spam sites don't last more than a year.

Registering for longer duration could reduce some chance that the site could be spam one. So at least it could influence the Google's sandbox affect for newer sites.

Also it is well known that higher age domains have higher trust factor than newer domains in the eyes of search engines.

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@LarsenBagley505

Matt Cutt, an engineer at Google, was asked the following question regarding domain registration length's effect on SEO and search results:


How much weight does the number of years a domain is registered for have on your ranking?


This was Matt's response (bold emphasis mine):


My short answer is not to worry about that very much. Not very much at all, in fact.

Danny Sullivan had asked about this recently because there were some registrars that were sending around emails...that said "Did you know that Google gives you a bonus in ranking if you register your site for 3 or more years?". Just to clarify, that's not based on anything that we've said.

My short answer is make great content, don't worry nearly as much about how many years your domain is registered for. Just because someone is sending you an email that says "Google does" or even may use this in ranking, it doesn't mean that you should automatically take them at face-value.

What makes a really big difference is the quality of your site, and the sort of links that you have pointing to you, not "Is my site registered for 3 or 4 years, instead of 1 or 2 years?"


So while domain registration length might have an effect on ranking, there are other factors that are much more important, such as quality content and quality back-links.

Personally, if I'm on a very small and tight budget, then I think that the potential benefit of a tiny increase to ranking just doesn't justify the cost, in my opinion. If I'm going to register a domain for 4-5 years, I'm going to do it because I really believe that my website will be around for that long, not because I'm trying to manipulate Google into ranking me higher.

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