GoDaddy References Google's Patent

You know you have good reach as a search engine when registrars use your patent numbers to sell domains. GoDaddy says:

Google recently filed United States Patent Application 20050071741. As part of that patent application, Google made apparent its efforts to wipe out search engine spam, stating:

'Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith."

Domains registered for longer periods give the indication, true or not, that their owner is legitimate. Google uses a domain's length of registration when indexing and ranking a Web site for inclusion in their organic search results.

So to prove to everyone that your site is the real deal, register for more than one year and increase your chances of boosting your search ranking on Google.

I know registrars always sell bogus submit your site to the search engines garbage, but I don't think I have ever seen one recommend registering for extended periods of time because of a Google patent before.

Smart marketing on them, and smart marketing on Google for putting endless amounts of FUD in that patent.

Published: November 9, 2005 by Aaron Wall in marketing

Comments

Aaron
November 10, 2005 - 8:22am

Hard to imagine that it's given that much weight among all the variables. More important would be the age of the domain and maybe using the Way Back Machine to see how long legit content has been on the site. Just because something was registered last week through 2010 doesn't mean it's more significant than something registered 3 years ago and expiring in 6 months.

November 11, 2005 - 8:08pm

Haha that's a smart move by GoDaddy! It makes sense to recommend that but at the same time it's helping them to upsell more services.

--Sean

®notepad
March 28, 2006 - 7:08am

What's with the "incentive?" - I don't get it; why would any legit company or organization even consider registering their domain for less than 5 - 10 years?

Is godaddy going after the kiddies' allowance money?

...good info for newbies I suppose - yet still a joke.

# # #

March 28, 2006 - 10:44am

I often register domains for less than 10 years. But then again I have hundreds of them.

anon
November 9, 2005 - 3:12pm

Interesting tho - i work in the UK market where it is only possible to buy a domain name for 2 yrs - if this was the case, what impact would it have for .co.uk names?

November 9, 2005 - 5:16pm

I saw it some months ago. It's a cool way to encourage people to renew their domains.

November 9, 2005 - 5:38pm

This is a great opportunity to build on the 'little guy vs the big guy' angle that their lower-priced domain names already represent...a startup site would have to drop 70$ or so to be 'legitimate' with Network Solutions, but only about $14 at goDaddy...

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