Domains + Page Rank

Names4sale · Jul 13, 2005

I know a lot SEO say that PR is not that important anymore, the last SEO conference I went to were saying this as well.

However, it is clear that the age of a domain/site is important in rankings. Does anyone know how long a domain can be unused for without loosing its SEO quality?

Example: www.any.co.uk has been used for three years in the Automotive Industry. It gets good SE results, and then it's not used for a few years. If someone then reregisters the domain, and uses it in the same industry, will the indexes remember this?

Loads of people sell domains with PR, just wondering how long the PR stays in effect.

Cheers,
Names4sale

aquanuke · Jul 13, 2005

Google monitors the whois for changes, so in theory any ownership changes would reset the PR.

accelerator · Jul 13, 2005

Names4sale said:
I know a lot SEO say that PR is not that important anymore, the last SEO conference I went to were saying this as well.

However, it is clear that the age of a domain/site is important in rankings. Does anyone know how long a domain can be unused for without loosing its SEO quality?

Once the site is down, I would imagine it will lose PR as soon as the next Google update comes along every few months or so, because Google can't index the site and should therefore kick it out.

Names4sale said:
Example: www.any.co.uk has been used for three years in the Automotive Industry. It gets good SE results, and then it's not used for a few years. If someone then reregisters the domain, and uses it in the same industry, will the indexes remember this?

Loads of people sell domains with PR, just wondering how long the PR stays in effect.

I don't think the PR will remain in place because of the above mentioned reason. However, if links on other high ranking sites were kept in place (i.e. they weren't checking for broken links), then I guess the PR boost from these sites could be regained once your site is made operational again.

Rgds

accelerator

accelerator · Jul 13, 2005

aquanuke said:
Google monitors the whois for changes, so in theory any ownership changes would reset the PR.

Although this is just one of a hundred or so factors that count towards PR. Therefore, I'm not sure that a change of ownership would necessarily mean the PR was totally reset. Has anyone seen this happen?

Rgds

accelerator

Names4sale · Jul 14, 2005

Thank you Uber Gurus

Some clever people in here.

Whilst we're on the subject. (kind of) Anyone know about how IP effects SEO/PR?

I had three sites, same themes, though different all on the same IP address. "Virtual Server" Google ranked one of them. They could have been classed as being the same theme, like blue widgets, red widgets etc. But they were designed for different companies in the same industry.

As soon as I moved them to separate servers, they all ranked better.

I've heard rumours that some sites have been banned from the outset as they were located on reconstituted IP addresses which had been previously banned.
(source Shari Thurow - http://www.searchenginesbook.com/author.html)

If this is the case, surely the opposite could/might/can be possible. I'm not one for using dodgy SEO techniques, as they never work in the long run. However, in an industry where a few places in the rankings makes a difference, I'd like to know the history of an IP address before going live.

accelerator · Jul 14, 2005

IP is important in recognising which country the site is located I think, so it's important for country-specific searches. If you have a UK site that you want found on Google UK, have your site on a UK server with a UK IP address.

As there is a shortage of IP addresses at the mo, you should not be penalised for having two different sites at the same IP address.

seochat.com is good for SEO info.

Rgds

accelerator

paul · Jul 14, 2005

If you have a UK site that you want found on Google UK, have your site on a UK server with a UK IP address.

Only if it's not a UK domain, you can host .co.uk domains anywhere you like and they will still show up in google UK

Google monitors the whois for changes, so in theory any ownership changes would reset the PR.

Not sure that applies to UK domains, what can have a big effect is if you change the content too quickly and add links too quickly

ryanforbes · Apr 20, 2006

accelerator said:
Once the site is down, I would imagine it will lose PR as soon as the next Google update comes along every few months or so, because Google can't index the site and should therefore kick it out.

I don't think the PR will remain in place because of the above mentioned reason. However, if links on other high ranking sites were kept in place (i.e. they weren't checking for broken links), then I guess the PR boost from these sites could be regained once your site is made operational again.

Rgds

accelerator

PR is directly based on IBLs i have a parked page which has still a number of IBLs which has a PR4 even though it had expired and re-registered

murph · Apr 27, 2006

Some say the domain is put back through the gg sandbox when the whois details are changed. The advice i have always had is if buying a site off someone leave the whois details unchanged.

I have used several expired domains and started from 0 PR when putting a new site on the domain. The domains were unused for >6 months