Just in case there were any doubts about the validity of my previous post, here is a current real-world example in evidence. One of our clients is a tea merchant who owns the trademark to Hu-Kwa tea. They have owned the hu-kwa.com domain name for quite some time now. Last week, I was contacted by two companies within an hour, each offering to sell me hukwa.com (without the hyphen), one using multiple e-mails. The first was a company called Flex Media / Flex Media Domains, which sent me an e-mail which included a “Priority Sales” hyperlink. This outfit is supposedly located in Hollywood, Florida. The second contact came in the form of three e-mails from InTrust Domains / Domain Names International / eTraffic Services, an outfit supposedly located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, sending me what they called a “Priority Domain Availability Notice. According to their website, they “currently manage a portfolio of approximately 10,000 domains, with about 70 new domains added each day.” I did a whois lookup at the time, and it very suspiciously showed nothing. I replied to this second company via e-mail, asking them for a price and the registration history (no reply, of course), although their e-mail directed me to a form where I could “express my interest”. I didn’t use the form with either of these outfits. Yesterday, I was contacted again, with a follow-up offer to sell me the “now available” hukwa.com. This time I clicked on the form, out of curiosity. It said that the price would be $397.00 and had a payment form.

I just did another whois lookup. Guess what? The company that contacted me yesterday registered the domain name YESTERDAY. I am guessing that happened immediately upon my clicking on their link! Either they are also “tasting” for 5 days, or – once they’ve had somebody express interest – they actually will keep the domain for a year. The price is $397.00 for a domain that they bought yesterday for about $6.00 (and can probably get refunded under a grace period).

Here is the current whois lookup information for the domain:
Domain Name: HUKWA.COM
Created On: 08-JUN-2010
Last Updated On: 08-JUN-2010
Expiration Date: 08-JUN-2011
Sponsoring Registrar: THREADSHARE.COM, INC
Status: ok
Registrant Name: Domain Admin
Registrant Organization: InTrust Domain Names
Registrant Street1: 4845A Pearl East Circle
Registrant City: Boulder
Registrant State/Province: CO
Registrant Postal Code: 80301
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: (1)(866) 582-2599
Registrant Email: domain@itdomainnames.net
Tech Email: domain@itdomainnames.net
Name Server: CALL.303-800-0310.COM
Name Server: FOR-SALE-AT.INTRUSTDOMAINS.COM

Check out the “website” of their registrar: http://threadshare.com/
Does this look like the site of a legitimate registrar? Not in my mind.

Here is the whois lookup for ThreadShare.com:
AboutUs: threadshare.com
Registration Service Provided By: Thought Convergence
Contact: domains@thoughtconvergence.com
Domain name: threadshare.com
Registrant Contact:
Thought Convergence, Inc.
Domain Administrator ()
11300 W. Olympic Boulevard
Suite 900
Los Angeles, CA 90064
US

ThoughtConvergence.com is located at the same address in Los Angeles.

Totally legal. Totally unethical. Isn’t the Internet wonderful?

In short, the answer is no.

I was one of four Web developers in a round-table session on broad-ranging Internet topics, presented at a trade association conference in New York this past weekend. In response to an audience question, one of my associates suggested that a longer-term domain name registration played a role in determining a site’s search engine ranking. The rationalization was based upon a presumption that a domain name registered or renewed for single-year terms was an indication of a “fly by night” business. Since it is always our policy to renew our clients’ domains (and our own domains) on a one-year basis, I had to take exception and question the validity of this statement.

Upon my return, I did a bit of online research, and this served to confirm that any suggestion that a longer-term domain name registration has an impact upon a site’s search engine ranking is total nonsense. Apparently this is a piece of misinformation that has been concocted and disseminated by GoDaddy(and often innocently passed along as “fact” by otherwise well-intentioned companies who use GoDaddy as their registrar of choice), in an effort to get people to sign up with them for longer terms. Long-term registrations are in any registrar’s interest because they reduce “churn”, the likelihood of a registrant to transfer to another registrar … either intentionally or as the result of being slammed by an unscrupulous registrar such as Domain Registry of America.

With some registrars, one must be very careful and wary about long-term registrations because they may be, in fact, banking your money (for 10 years, for example), while actually registering your domain on a year-by-year basis, essentially preventing you from transferring your domain to another registrar without suffering a financial loss and the loss of what you presumed was the remaining length of your registration. Do a whois lookup to check. The 10-year registration that you thought covered you through 2018 may, in fact, only be covering you on a year-by-year basis until 2018. In other words, if you transferred now, you may be in for the rude awakening that your domain has only been registered or renewed through 2010. Fortunately, this unscrupulous practice is quite rare.

In summary, there is NO reason to register a domain, or to renew a domain, for more than one year at a time, unless the discount for doing so presents a sufficient incentive in itself. According to Google itself, there is no validity to this recommendation.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=00acf87986f79dfa&hl=en
http://www.seoxp.net/?p=384

Domain authority, on the other hand, does play a role in determining search engine ranking. Domain authority is a measurement of the accumulated length of time that a domain name has been registered, but it has nothing to do with the term of registration (or renewal) itself. Domain authority is directly related to the length of time that a website has been in existence and is part of the explanation for why older, established websites often appear higher in search results than newer websites that are otherwise superior in every respect.

Here are a few additional sources of reference:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/domain_names/3334950.htm
http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/does-registering-your-domain-for-longer.php

My advice is to always question statements of this nature claim to present tips that appear to be a bit far-fetched, in this case the SEO equivalent of urban legends. Take the time to do a search, and discover the truth.