Google Dismisses Long-Term Domain Registration As Unnecessary

Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 17:26

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When the option exists to either rent or buy something, the second choice is almost always better; it makes financial sense to plan for the long term. But Google employee John Mueller recently stated that you don’t need to worry about other things when making commitments to domain names.

The theory that Google doesn’t favor domains when they’re registered for just a short period of time has existed for a while. It sort of makes sense, too, since spammers are more likely to register domains for one year and then discard them than go for the long haul.

However, Mueller wrote on a Webmaster Central Help thread, “A bunch of TLDs do not publish expiration dates — how could we compare domains with expiration dates to domains without that information? It seems that would be pretty hard, and likely not worth the trouble. Even when we do have that data, what would it tell us when comparing sites that are otherwise equivalent? A year (the minimum duration, as far as I know) is pretty long in internet-time :-).”

Mueller then continued, “Personally, I’d recommend using whatever works for you. If you feel more comfortable by registering for 10 years, go for it. Just make sure to update your whois information so that you still get the expiration notice when it comes time to renew :-).”

So don’t worry about anything besides how much money you’ve got in your pocket and what sort of pricing breaks are available the next time you’re confronted with this decision.