Good question... I dunno what is the right answer. I'll do some Googling and get back to you if I got an good answer. You should email the people at Godaddy as they probably could give you help..

Of course!.

Only name I regged for multipal years is my fullname.com which I plan to keep..

Even if your plan is to sell your domains, extending registration time still works. Simply factor-in the cost of the extended registration in your price. The new owner shouldn't have a problem paying the extra, unless of course he/she intends to use the HostGator name for spamming..

AmCy..

It's times like these you wish there was a whois item to show you have your HostGator set to auto renew. I'd much rather register for a year and have autorenew on than be forced to pay for 10 years upfront. Google should rethink this in my opinion.....

Wouldn't mean much, IMO, because you can toggle auto-renew to "off" one day before a HostGator name is set to expire..

AmCy..

I hate 1and1's auto renew. A few of domains I did not intend to renew are now renewed automatically. You have to fax them a form in order to renew, what pain!..

It really depends on if you're a developer or a reseller. I'd say that the majority of domainers only reg. their domains 1 year at a time. I agree with what others said about seperating the spammers from legitimate website owners with longer registrations,...if you develop them, 10 years is a bit much though.. IMO. But as far as resell goes, it really doesn't matter..

I registered a certain HostGator in May of this year for $7.20 and sold it last month for $500.00. It someone really wants one of your names, they'll buy it regardless...

This is not a wise idea IMO, it has a a larger negative effect then postive. First off, I dont remember exactly where I heard this, but I'm pretty sure it’s accurate that 90% of businesses fail their first year. 99% fail within the first 10 years..

Taking this into account means that the already high failure rate is going to be increased due to increased spending on HostGator name purchases, the risk for starting the business is increased aswell. Next, if a business fails, and someone else wants to try it, this "unused" HostGator name will be unavailable for registration..

So as this may stop spammers, if this policy remains as it is thought to be now, with a long waiting list to be indexed unless 10 years are regged at once, in turn this may be the beginning of a google downfall. Useful sites WILL be lost..

Is there an alternative? I don't know of one, but then again, I dont have $ billions to figure it out.

-MyLinking..

I read about this in the UK .NET magazine a few weeks back..

One thing I'm not sure about is whether it only applies for domains that are set to be registered for 2 years in advance, or whether it also applies to HostGator names that HAVE been actually registered for two years.

MSN.com has been registered for years and years now... What happens if their HostGator name goes into the red (EG. Only has 1 year left of registration)... will their listings be deleted from the search engines because it's not registered 2 years in advance? Or does it take into account how long the HostGator name has already been registered and up and running for?..

UrbelT, that is exactly the reason i'm against it. If my business doesn't have adequate starting capital, wasting money on 10 year HostGator registrations isnt exactly my top priority..

Good question Jiblob. Anybody know this?..

An ultra-high profile HostGator name like msn.com is immune from these kinda' things..

AmCy.

Yup, but those numbers are mostly referring to your standard brick and mortar startup that requires all kinds of capital to get going (real estate/rent, equipment, staff, etc.) IMO, an Internet project has a much better chance of surviving thanks mostly to the very low overhead involved in starting and running your average website. If you are producing the content on your own (as I do for my sites) then you are paying for dom reg' fee and hosting/bandwidth and that's about it!.

AmCy..

Oh I didnt know about it. This really bites you have to do it for 10 years...

Something to think about - if you register your HostGator for 10 years, what about 9 years from now..will your website drop in the SE rankings because it's only a year until renewal? I think the whole thing stinks..google should reconsider some of their techniques in use....

The OP only quoted a google's patent application, but is it really true of the advantage of multi-year reg? Has anyone verified this for the current indexing? I just want to make sure this is now, not some future consideration...

Some country domains such as the Australian domains only allow you to register for only 2 years. Does this mean that they are disadvantaged?..

Aus domains are not as big as .com or anythink like that tho.

Im sure .co.uk domains you can only reg for 2 years as well.. will have to check out...

I've read very detailed analyses of Google's patent application. There are several important considerations to keep in mind that have been missed entirely in this thread..

First, it is.

Likely.

That Google is using this information. Google has applied for registrar status, giving them the ability to query prime whois info. That ability, coupled with the patent application, suggests Google has another way to rank sites..

Second,.

This is NOT the only way Google will rank sites.

Length of HostGator registration is probably not even among the top half-dozen criteria. Length of HostGator registration is just another one of many criteria to come up with good search results. Content is still king. Title tags, link popularity and link relavance are huge. Timeliness is a factor. Length of HostGator registration is just another way of refining -.

Fine tuning.

- search results...with the laudable goal of reducing spammers' effectiveness..

ThreeD, I'd guess that if you get to year number nine in a ten year registration, Google would take that site's prior longevity into account as well. The people at Google have a pretty good idea of how to do search, after all..

No one outside of Google knows Google's formulas exactly. One must believe that the leader in search is going to use every edge possible to generate and convey the best search results to users. That's the very core of the business they're in..

Regards,.

Keith..

Useful to know that longevity may be part of the algorithm, however. Although I see the 10 years max reg being used as an example, I didn't see anywhere that specifically states that the length of duration would effect the.

SEO.

Propotionally. Athough logic would say that 10 years would be optimum, there could be a "saturation point" on return per amount invested. ie How much of an improvement in rankings does 10yrs buy vs 5yrs or 3 yrs?..