One of the many factors in Google’s search engine algorithm is the age of a domain name. In a small way, the age of a domain gives the appearance of longevity and therefore, a higher relevancy score in Google.

Driven by spam sites which pop up and die off quickly, the age of the domain is usually a sign whether or not a site is yesterday’s news or tomorrow’s popular website. We see this in the world of business, for example. While the novelty that may go with a new store in town brings a short burst of initial activity, people tend to trust a business that has been around for a long time over one that is brand new. The same is true for websites. Or, as Rob from BlackwoodProductions.com says, “Rent the store (i.e. register the domain) before you open for business”.

Two things that are considered in the age of a domain name are:

• The age of the website
• The length of time a domain has been registered

The age of a website is built up of how long the content has been actually on the web, how long the site has been in promotion, and even the last time content was updated. The length of time a domain has been registered is measured by not only the actual date the domain was registered but also how long it is registered for. Some domains only register for a year at a time, while others are registered for two, five, or even ten years.

In the latest Google update that SEOs call the Jagger Update, some of the big changes seen were the importance given to age; the age of incoming links, age of web content, and the date the domain was registered. There were many things, in reality, that was changed in this last update, but since we’re talking about the age of a domain, we’ll only deal with those issues specifically. We’ll talk more in other articles about other factors you will want to be aware of that Google changed in their evaluation criteria of websites on the Internet.

One of the ways Google uses to minimize search engine spam is by giving new websites a waiting period of three to four months before giving it any PageRank. This is referred to as the “sandbox effect”. It’s called the “sandbox effect” because it has been said that Google wants to see if those sites are serious about staying around on the web. The sandbox analogy comes from the concept that Google does this by throwing all of the new sites into a sandbox and let them play together, away from all the adults. Then, when those new sites “grow up”, so to speak, then they are allowed to be categorized with the “adults”, or the websites that aren’t considered new.

What does this mean to you? For those of you with new websites, you may be disappointed in this news, but don’t worry. There are some things you can do while waiting for the sandbox period to expire, such as concentrating on your backlink strategies, promoting your site through Pay-per-click, articles, RSS feeds, or in other ways. Many times, if you spend this sandbox period wisely, you’ll be ready for Google when it does finally assign you a PageRank, and you could find yourself starting out with a great PageRank!

Even though the domain’s age is a factor, critics believe it only gets a little weight in the algorithm. Since the age of your domain is something you have no control over, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your site isn’t going to rank well in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). It does mean, however, that you will have to work harder in order to build up your site popularity and concentrate on factors that you can control, link inbound links and the type of content you present on your website.

So what happens if you change your domain name? Does this mean you’re going to get a low grade with a search engine if you have a new site? No, not necessarily. There are a few things you can do to help ensure that your site won’t get lost in the SERPs because of the age of the domain.

1. Make sure you register your domain name for the most extended amount of time possible. Many registrars allow you to register a domain name for as long as five years, and some even longer. Registering your domain for a more extended period gives an indication that your site intends to be around for a long time, and isn’t going to disappear after a few months. This will help boost your score with regards to your domain’s age.

2. Consider registering a domain name even before you are sure you’re going to need it. We see many domains out there that even while they are registered; they don’t have a website to go with it. This could mean that the site is in development, or simply someone saw the use of that particular domain name and wanted to snatch it up before someone else did. There doesn’t seem to be any problems with this method so far, so it certainly can’t hurt you to buy a domain name you think could be catchy, even if you end up just selling it later on.

3. Think about purchasing a domain name that was already pre-owned. Not only will this allow you to avoid the “sandbox effect” of a new website in Google, but it also allows you to keep whatever PageRank may have already been attributed to the domain. Be aware that most pre-owned domains with PageRank aren’t as cheaply had as a new domain, but it might be well worth it to you to invest a bit more money right at the start.

4. Keep track of your domain’s age. One of the ways you can determine the age of a domain is with this handy Domain Age Tool. What it does is allows you to view the approximate age of a website on the Internet, which can be very helpful in determining what kind of edge your competitors might have over you, and even what a site might have looked like when it first started.

To use it, type in the URL of your domain and the URLs of your competitors, and click submit. This will give you the age of the domains and other interesting information, like anything that had been cached from the site initially. This could be especially helpful if you are purchasing a pre-owned domain.

Because trustworthy sites are going to have to be the wave of the future, factoring in the age of a domain is a good idea. Even though a site that may have been around for years may suddenly go belly-up, or the next big eBay or Yahoo! just might be getting it to start, it may not be a full measure of how trustworthy a site is or will be. This is why there are many other factors that weigh into a search engine’s algorithm and not just a single factor alone. What we do know is that we’ve seen age becoming of more importance than it had been previously, there are only good things to be said about having a site that’s been around for a while.

The former lead engineer for Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant told a gathering of Australian blue-chip brands including Qantas, Bankwest, AGL and Open Universities, to stop working on their websites and apps as the primary channel for customer contact and commerce.

Alex Spinelli, who led the design of Alexa’s operating system until a year ago, said branded websites and apps were “unnatural human experiences” and had failed to live up to what the early vision of the internet was supposed to be.

But he would say that.

Mr Spinelli is now chief technology officer at LivePerson, considered the global leader in AI-based conversational platforms which allow companies to blend human and bot interactions in customer service, product queries and commerce.

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More than 100 billion messages are sent each day across Facebook and Instagram and 13 million text messages are sent every minute in the US, Mr Spinelli said. LivePerson managed 400 million conversations last year across its client base with half having AI integration.

The idea of one-to-one personalisation at scale has been talked about since the 1990s but only in the past three years has it become a reality because AI and machine learning can now facilitate a seamless experience between people and machines in a more natural, conversational way than screens, clicks and swipe rights.

Online’s share of retail sales is only 16 per cent in the US. In Australia it’s 6-7 per cent. Websites have failed most businesses.

— Alex Spinelli, LivePerson

But is Mr Spinelli’s bold call to kill brand websites and apps in five years just a snappy soundbite?

“We’re dead serious about it,” he told CMO Brief during a visit to Australia. “Whether it’s going to take two, three or five years remains to be seen. There are some things that still have to happen for a fully-fledged replacement. In messaging apps, we need a few more rich experiences, we need authentication, which is starting to become available. There are certainly some dependencies queuing up but they are going to happen over the next one or two years. It’s pretty realistic if you look at something like Buddybank, which is way out there in its ability to attract customers. Revenue per user is the highest in the UniCredit family.”

UniCredit is an Italian banking group which launched Buddybank in 2017 as a conversational banking app only on iPhones. It runs a 24-hour concierge desk for all its customer tasks and queries via a blend of conversations with people, messaging and AI.

Optus, Qantas, Bankwest, AGL and Open Universities are among the line-up of Australian companies pushing into conversational platforms. Many have had basic web-chat services for years but the deployment of more sophisticated machine-learning tools and the emergence of professions like “conversational designers” are advancing quickly to create mass personalisation.

We do more of that business through our messaging channels than we do through the phone now.

— Andy Sheats, Open Universities Australia

“There is trouble in paradise,” Mr Spinelli said of today’s website and app system. “The web is not working for most businesses. Online’s share of retail sales is only 16 per cent in the US. In Australia it’s 6-7 per cent. Websites have failed most businesses.”

Gartner predicts by 2021 customer care will overtake product and price as the number one way for business to differentiate how someone feels about how they connect and interact with a brand. Gartner says by 2021, 80 per cent of customer interactions will be automated with AI in some form.

“That’s where we believe dialogues and conversations can make a huge difference, not websites and apps,” Mr Spinelli said. “It’s not a pipedream. About 70 per cent of customers will give up within 10 minutes if they can’t connect with you.”

Online environments, or websites, aren’t going anywhere fast.

— Will Lavender, CXLavender

However, the founder of customer experience agency, CXLavender, Will Lavender, whose clients include Westpac, American Express and NBN, said websites and apps were still too useful to kill.

“Online environments, or websites, aren’t going anywhere fast,” he said. “People like and need to be able to browse, get help or information. Websites service these needs well. Voice assistants are really useful too, and there’s no doubt that they have a far greater role to play within the online service experience. Sometimes, though, we humans just want words and images – 72 per cent of us are more visually orientated.”

Mr Lavender said one of his largest clients was integrating voice assistants for customer service but said “assistant” was the key word. “There’s so much opportunity to assist customers online with more intelligent word, image and voice assistance,” he said. “Sometimes voice will be better, other times a video or words will be.”

Open Universities Australia executive general manager Andy Sheats said it managed 450,000 chat and messaging conversations last year with people exploring university courses across 14 institutions including UNSW, Macquarie, RMIT, Flinders, Swinburne and University of New England. That figure was up 42 per cent on the previous 12 months.

“We do more of that business through our messaging channels than we do through the phone now,” he told CMO Brief. “Our students are all using these messaging channels every day and there’s a frustration when we’re not there with them. That’s really what’s driving it. For us, it’s become our highest usage channel. There was a lot of demand that we probably didn’t even see. I would see us very easily tripling the number of conversations we’re having. Some of that is us actually just realising that demand from customers was there and so we’ve needed to change our processes internally, change our licensing model with LivePerson – all those things we have to do to let our usage max to the level that we’re finding in demand. That’s gone really well.”

We’re really serious about this. Companies should stop working on their websites and apps.

— Alex Spinelli, LivePerson

Mr Sheats said Open Universities was progressively rolling out AI functionality but he saw it more as “driver assist, not autonomous driving” in the mix of bots and real people.

Still, there are public perception hurdles to overcome. A study by Survata and LivePerson of 5000 people in six international markets, including Australia, showed more than half of those surveyed would still rather speak with a human than a bot, even if they have to wait for a short period. In Australia, 56 per cent said they would rather wait three minutes for a human than get immediate assistance from a bot.

Mr Spinelli said US telco T-Mobile, airlines like Delta and Virgin Atlantic and banks such as Citi and HSBC were all moving fast into conversational commerce and that consumer receptivity was growing, even among older segments, because they were used to messaging apps with family members.

“We’re really serious about this. Companies should stop working on their websites and apps and go learn AI and machine learning and then really start thinking about how conversations and dialogues are the new web design,” he said.