I think it’s safe to say we all agree:
An old authoritative domain is much better than a new domain, provided that old domain has no baggage (e.g., past history of spam, stupid [obvious or accidental] black hat SEO, etc).
So just how long does it take for a domain to show up in the SERPs?
Obviously, if I went and bought a domain at, say, NetSol (Don’t use them) or Register.com (don’t use them either, PM for why if you are really curious), it’s a long, drawn out possibly libelous, yet accurate long, drawn out painful, aggravating story involving 1500 + domains (you did know i was ADD, AHAD and AHKD, right?). So I register a name somewhere, then I post a webpage. What is the quickest possible amount of time to actually have that domain show up in search results?
NOTE: We normally register a domain, file the copyright materials, THEN launch the website at the ad agency/PR firm I work at. Most domains will sit for anywhere from 90 days to a year while we build the website for the client. I was asked (in a meeting, no less) exactly how long does it take for a new website on a FRESH domain (no, I am not speaking HIP HOP, I mean recently purchased virgin domain).
My Answer: “Umm, well usually it’s better to have an existing domain, but if you are asking me how long it will take for Google to find the site after you launch it on a fresh domain, i would have to say my experience shows anywhere from 2-8 weeks.”
- the reply: “Two weeks?”
- my reply: “Two to EIGHT weeks.”
- their reply: “Can’t you do some kind of magic and make it happen faster?”
- my reply: “You mean like a press release to PR NewsWire, me posting it on about 10 of the blogs I own, DIGGing it, submitting it to Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ, then buying $5.00 worth of PPC on MSN AdCenter?”
- their reply: “Yes, how long does it take?”
- my reply: “Two to eight weeks.”
Apparently that wasn’t good enough…so now they think I can achieve the impossible, and they tend to rely on that more than not (“You can take a client’s webpage from #17 to #3 in 2 hours in Google but you can’t make a domain show up in Google any faster?”)
Hence, my experiment. Can I, we, anyone make a freshly purchased, created domain show up any faster than two to eight weeks?
Expediency factors (yes, I know this is not the same as the client’s website that I just left the meeting on, but I want to see what is the quickest I can do it):
- A. I bought the domain from GOOGLE
- B. The domain now points to a blog that has existed since 2005
- C. the blog is a Blogger (Google) blog
- D. I’ve spent the morning changing links everywhere from my old blog address to the new domain
Mitigating factors:
- A. the new domain contains the letters S-E-O
- B. it’s a blog hosted on Blogger (remember splogs?)
- C. my blog is locked down and i still have to put in a captcha code to post my own blog posts
Am I missing anything?
Anyway, the domain was purchased this morning at 7am…how long will it take to show up?
Bets anyone?
Does the sandbox still exist?
