Member Avatar for tadisaus2

Hello,

I am looking to buy one or two domains but want to know which one is better in SEO.

1. 2 years old domain with PR1.
2. 7 months old domain with PR3.

Both offer the same price.

Which one is better?

Thanks.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by wisemaster

Dani AI

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Short answer: domain age by itself is a weak/irrelevant ranking signal — what really moves the needle is the history and signals a domain has accumulated (links, content, clean use). That explains why older domains often rank well, but age alone isn’t the cause. Google’s search team has repeatedly said domain age isn’t a direct ranking benefit. Search Engine Journal summarizes those comments and the patent context.

Public PageRank values (the PR numbers people quoted) are no longer a reliable market metric, so don’t buy a name just because it shows PR1/PR3 in an old report. The public toolbar PageRank stopped being updated and the visible scores were retired; modern assessments rely on backlink and topical-authority metrics instead (use Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, etc.). See the PageRank history note on Wikipedia and read data on why older pages dominate SERPs in the Ahrefs study. Ahrefs shows a correlation between age and ranking but also explains correlation ≠ causation.

Practical due-diligence checklist before you buy (do these for both domains): check historical content and redirects on the Wayback Machine; inspect the backlink profile for quality, topical relevance, and unnatural anchor patterns using tools like Ahrefs or Majestic; run a “site:example.com” search to see indexed pages; query WHOIS/domain-history; and — if you get access after purchase — add the domain to Google Search Console to check for manual actions or security issues. The Google disavow/manual-action docs explain how legacy spam links can still cause trouble. (See Wayback Machine, Majestic, and Google’s disavow guidance: developers.google.com/search/blog/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.)

Tie-back to the thread: and were right to focus on link quality, was right about topical relevance, and correctly flagged brandability over raw metrics. For your two options, prefer the one with the cleaner, higher‑quality backlink profile and a non‑spammy history — not simply the older or the higher legacy-PR number.

Recommended Answers

All 8 Replies

Member Avatar for santimock

I think that the PR3 is better, because means that has better quality of backlinks and could be better for get top rankings.

Member Avatar for AirForceOne

I think you might also look to see if there were keywords in the domains and if those backlinks are niche relative or not. Generally speaking, the PR 3 one would be better.

Have a nice day,

Member Avatar for infinique

It absolutely matters. However, it seems that MSN and Yahoo favors that more.

Member Avatar for mackone

Domain age in my experience is pretty important. If you register your domain for 2-4 years, it would be better than just 1-2 years.

Member Avatar for jay 11

If i had to choose, i would pay no attention to Google PageRank as that will change once you redesign the site and add new content. Instead, i would evaluate the quality of citations each site currently has and I would also consider which domain is easier to remember and brand or fits nicer with targeted keywords.

Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

I agree with posters about going for the older site - PageRank can be easily changed with SEO changes - site domain age cant. Remember that!

Member Avatar for web_design

It is simple the Domain with PR 3 is better because it indicates that it has some good amount of backlinks and good original content. so it is worth to have that domain.

Member Avatar for wisemaster

If those are the true PR numbers, then just looking at the PR data alone the PR3 domain would be better.
However, the question is which domain name is more relevant to what you want to do with it? The domain name is very important. For example, if you are looking to sell red shoes then redshoes.com is a much better domain name than shoes.com.
The age of a domain is one factor search engines take into account and the older the domain is, the better. You can calculate the age of domain by using the date of domain name registration and expiration date.You can find Creation and Expiration date of a domain easily by doing a whois search in sites like .Sites that are older have more authority with Google and other search engines because they have been around a while, and aren't some fly-by-night website that could he here today and gone tomorrow.

So,I think 2 years old domain with PR1 is better than the 7 months old domain.

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