Time to put a myth to rest – your domain is not “more valuable” because it’s old

It’s a myth that has spread across the domain name world for years – the older a domain, the more valuable it is. This morning domain industry veteran Alan Dunn hit the nail on the head with this tweet:

domain-age-doesnt-matter

I can’t tell you how many times someone has emailed me about valuable “aged” domains that they have, and when I look at the list, it’s all junk. Just take a quick look at Go Daddy auctions and you’ll find a ton of domains, worth $0, all registered in the 90’s and expiring. Here’s an example from this morning, every name you see on this list was registered before 1997:

aged-domains

Some Domainers have domain portfolios that look like this, and they email other Domainers with subjects like, “Valuable aged domain portfolio” or “Portfolio of aged domains registered in 1996.” If you find yourself doing this, or even starting to go down this path, stop. Seriously, you’re only fooling yourself and if you have somehow convinced yourself that these domains are valuable, you’ll keep renewing junk every year and eating up money that could be used to buy actual investment-grade domains.

Now it’s important for me to say something that should be obvious but that if I don’t put in writing could get confused. Yes – there are some VERY valuable domains that were registered in the 90’s. Think about it, a LOT more domain names were available to register back then so a lot of the super premium one-word .COMs were registered back then.

At the end of the day, it’s the domain name itself and the TLD its on that define the value, age is nothing more than a vanity metric. So go ahead, buy domains registered in 1996, just make sure you buy the 1% that are actually investment grade domains.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton