Hacker News Reader

interesting conclusion there, what makes you lean that way?

I suspect the newer domain would look more active, more current and therefore more likely to host content useful now/of contemporary interest.

I suspect ranking 'degrades' slightly over time - don't keep adding content and lose places in the SERP.

Having said that, it's pretty much hypothetical. A ten year old domain will have more links and more content, and I think _that_ is why old domains rank well. It usually takes time to develop a great quantity of useful, ranking content and links, hence the perception that "aged domains" are more valuable.

Anyone else have thoughts / different view on this?

I agree with you on everything but your first point. It's just as reasonable to assume an old domain has fresh content as a new domain, there's no connection between domain age and how fresh the content is on it/how active it is. Look at Reddit, or for that matter HN. Older domains, fresh content every second.

But yeah, old domains basically have had more time to accumulate trust/links/shares/content, so they're more likely to do better in the search engines.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com