Domain age

Domain age is the time since a domain was first registered. It comes from the public registration record, which is a different thing from when the site went live, when the current owner bought it, or when the content was written.

The record is served by RDAP today and by WHOIS historically. The field to read is the registration event, and it survives ownership changes: a name registered in 1998 and sold three times is still 1998 old.

What domain age is worth in search

Less than people think. Google has said plainly that domain age is not a ranking factor, and the correlation people observe has a simpler explanation: old domains have had longer to collect links, and links are what the rating measures.

Where age genuinely carries information is risk. A domain registered eleven days ago that already sends mail, or already sells something, is a different proposition from one registered in 2011. That is the reason age appears on every fraud check and on almost no ranking check.

What Domduck records

The rdap source, read once per domain rather than daily, because a registration date does not change. It stores the creation date, the registrar and the status codes. The age shown on any page is computed from the date at render time, so it is right tomorrow without a rewrite.

Two limits are worth stating. Country top-level domains often publish no RDAP service at all, so some domains have no reading and that is a real answer rather than an error. And registrant identity is redacted almost everywhere under privacy rules, so the record gives you dates, a registrar and a status, not a person.

Reading it honestly

An expiry date in the record is not a promise the owner will renew. A redemptionPeriod status means the name already expired and can still be recovered. pendingDelete means the window closed and the name drops within days. Those three states are the difference between "this is taken" and "this is about to be available", and a date alone does not tell you which.