Buying more years on domain name?

I have no idea if this is true but I wanted to run it off all you guys and gals.

When you buy a domain name or registry an already existing domain name you own is it a good idea to buy multiple years for your domain name.. I have actually heard that Search engines like google etc, will see your domain is set to 5 or 10 years etc and will give you more juice cause you have a domain name that will be around for quite some time, is there any truth to this

Sounds outlandish to me.

This idea appeared in a Google patent, whereupon domain registrars (surprise, surprise -- no alternative agenda there then) widely promoted it as being fact, despite there being no evidence that supports the argument that they are in fact using it. Even if it were a factor, it would be so minor as to be negligible, since it really has no bearing on the relevance, or even quality of the site.

The argument that buying a domain for 10 years instead of 1 is a sign that you're more serious about your site is decidedly tenuous. All it really proves is that you had some spare cash in the bank at the time to spend on registrars fees.

thanks all, i wasnt really looking forward to buying multiple years. Cheers

The real story... It was rumored that, back in the good old bad days of rampant black hat SEO practitioners, that a "black hat" registers "throw away" sites several at a time. This being true..., so the rumor went, the black hat would only register domains for 12 months at a time because they expect them to be banned by Google within that time period. The brains of this rumor then thought.... "I bet Google thinks any site only registered for 12 months might be a black hat site." Pure rubbish.

Bottomline: Google could care less how long a site registration is for... Google, it is rumored, might care how long a site has been live; but only minimally so.

I'm reading this thread and I like how people speak so authoritatively about this topic without any proof or even reasoned explanation. I don't pretend to know for certain whether Google cares about such things, but I can tell you that Google definately cares about site age, so it's not a far cry that they would care about domain registration length.

The best thing about opinions.... everybody can have one.

Bottom line - Domain age is one of the factors that Google uses to determine its overall authority and trust. There are lots more factors that go in to the mix when determining this. But having an older site IMO is better that having a brand new one. I recently spoke with the owner of a BIG directory and I asked for advice, which they replied "if you have been around for long enough, you will get good traffic". I have also heard Aaron Wall (seo book) say that older domains rank better than newer domains.

If you buy up a domain thats been around for a few years and has got a good linkage profile, it's definitely going to be easier to rank that brand new site.

However, a 10 year old domain which has never been live, without any links, isn't going to be of any benefit.

If I was given the option of buying a new domain and trying to rank it, or buying a 10 year old domain for £3000 (which some people do pay, which is way ott) I would choose the new one.

If you have a great site that acquires loads of links really quickly, gets lots and lots of visitors due to its popularity, it's going to rank well no matter how old it is.