Do Longer Term Domain Registrations Help with Search Engine Visibility?

Recently my friend Josh Hurley sent me the following screen capture. He asked "have you seen this -- it is part of the up-sell strategy when renewing with Network Solutions:"

In case you can't read that:

Did you know? Registering a domain name for a longer term not only saves you money, but helps to increase your search engine ranking. Consider a 5-year term!

Why it works: Search engines perceive domain names registered for 5 years or longer to be more legitimate than domain names registered for a shorter term, and therefore rank them more highly.

I was intrigued; on one level it makes sense. On another level, lots of good-sounding, completely-untrue SEO info gets passed around as gospel because people don't look at it critically.

So, I headed off to the forums at HighRankings and found this recent thread on the length of domain registration as it applies to search engine visibility.

Short answer: only Google (and Yahoo, etc.) know for sure, but it appears to have little to no effect on ranking from the little anecdotal evidence collected. If Google ever did put a lot of weight on that particular algorithm it seems insanely easy to abuse and is like to be the target of scam artists.

Just goes to show you that you can't necessarily trust businesses to provide accurate information when the outcome may benefit or hurt them financially. Nope, the only sure way to increase your search engine visibility is a business blog. Guaranteed.

Rich Brooks
Business Blog Designer

Comments

[Shane Kane -TitleSuccess.com]

Very interesting! As you mentioned it's difficult to determine the validity of this info.