Why do some emails land in your spam folder while others are successfully delivered to your inbox? Or how certain websites receive almost instant enhanced search engine optimization? One of the more under-the-radar, yet just as essential, reasons behind the above is domain age. Domain age is one of the more under-the-radar, yet just as essential, reasons behind the above. Within the digital realm, the relative age of an email address helps assess how trustworthy and reputable a potential email correspondence from that email address will be.Â
For example, domains older than ten years are statistically more inclined to achieve thirty percent better email deliverability than their younger counterparts. This is the article that will explain everything you need to know about email domain age. It’ll explore how it impacts domain authority, positioning, rankings, and deliverability. So let’s get started and learn all about this little cyberspace time bomb that controls your kingdom.
Domain age is the length of time a domain has been alive and registered. Domain age is one of the most important factors that Email Service Providers (ESPs) use to assess if an email coming from a domain is legitimate and reputable. In other words, it’s like an aged reputation when it comes to your email address; the longer it’s been established, the more mail systems can review its past performance and recognize it as a source.
Domain age is determined from the day a domain is initially registered. The registration date is public information and accessible via WHOIS, the domain registration monitoring and archival resource. Furthermore, every time a domain is renewed, its domain age increases as well (which is a positive occurrence for domains that seem to remain live). In addition, domains that are registered solely for email purposes factor in domain age as it relates to the email sending domain. The longer the history of activity, the better for ESPs to whitelist a domain.
Since website domains and email domains are registered with creation dates, they are “aged.” However, they can mean different things. For example, the age of a website domain is more critical concerning search engine optimization (SEO)—the longer a domain has been around, the more likely it will show up on a list of search engine results as a trusted source. Concerning email domains, the age of a domain matters for email deliverability—meaning whether or not emails go to someone’s spam or junk folder instead of the intended recipient’s inbox. An older email domain has better email deliverability and can go farther because spam filters can accept or whitelist older email domains with proven track records and reputations, whereas newer email domains have a reputation for a while with no trust to rely upon.
Domain age factors significantly into whether recipients and ESPs deem an email legitimate or not. An older domain has a history for assessment—domain owners are either longstanding spammers or long-time legitimate senders. The longer someone has owned a domain and conducted itself with legitimate emailing practices, the more ESPs are likely to retain that information to indicate that the domain has not been spammed in the past. Thus, when someone receives an email from a domain that has been around for a while, it seems legit, and they’re less likely to flag it as spam.Â
Domain age contributes to what seems secure to users and security software. For instance, older, more established domains have been around for years, not hacked, and seem secure because they bolster security measures over time. So, it gives users and clientele peace of mind—especially in domains that require intimate email communications, like finance and healthcare—that opening and responding to such a domain is safe. Furthermore, many phishing attacks come from newer domains since they’re easier and cheaper to register and throw away once a hacker gets their fill. So, for virtual security measures or skittish users, newer domains are guilty by association.
Domain reputation matters because it shows ESPs whether a domain goes straight to the spam folder—on occasion—and worse, blacklisted. The variance from inbox to spam box (and beyond) illustrates how reliable a domain is with respect to the messages sent from said domain. Therefore, the probability of proper reception is impacted by a domain’s reputation. However, relative to someone’s concern from personal experience, this is catastrophic if any form of email correspondence is ever to be successful; a clear good standing is excellent for the greatest opportunity for correspondence.
Abrupt increases in email volume can indicate spam activity. More favourably received are consistent email volumes or slow increases in line with company expansion.
Good recipient engagement—opens, clicks, and forwards—improves domain reputation. It can be ruined by negative encounters like high bounce rates and spam complaints.
ESPs look for spam-like traits in content (e.g., a lot of capitals, deceptive subject lines, and a high image-to-text percentage). Good, pertinent content improves reputation.
Standards for authentication practices include SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance). These protocols certify that the email content has not been altered in transit and that the domain sending the email is allowed to do so.
A domain’s reputation may be seriously harmed by being included on Real-time Blackhole Lists (RBLs) or DNS-based blacklists (DNSBLs). ESPs block IPs involved in spamming or other harmful activity using these lists.
Related – Top 10 IP Address Blacklist Removal Tools [Cons & Pros]
Part of what shapes a domain’s reputation is a long-term perspective on its email sending behavior, including how any problems were fixed.
- Sender Score. It indicates how a domain stands in terms of the email sending patterns over time, and ranges from 0 to 100. Services such as Return Path give sender scores by considering complaints, unknown user rates (emails sent to non-existent addresses), Spam Trap hits and so on. Higher sender scores indicate a good domain reputation.
- IP reputation. The IP reputation also has a lot to do with the reputation of domains as they use that IP address to send emails. ESPs keep an eye on these IPs over time, looking for signs they might be used as spammers. Discrete metrics include engagement rates, blacklist status (if sending domain or IP), the age of an address and how many distinct domains send from a shared/traded/leased/outcome based on classification IP.
- Engagement Metrics. Email clients, like Gmail, assign different reputation to how well recipients engage with emails from your mail domain. It considers open rates, how often your emails get moved to other folders and even if people delete your emails without ever reading them.
Finally, keeping consistent and interesting email habits is just as important as technical configurations like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC when managing domain reputation. Organizations may guarantee that their communications reach their audience successfully and protect their email deliverability by knowing and actively controlling these elements.
- Open Rate. The frequency with which emails are opened by recipients, indicating engagement and interest.
- Click-Through Rate. Measures how often recipients click on links within the email, further indicating engagement.
- Read Rate. The rate at which emails are read, which can be a more specific indicator of engagement than open rate.
- Reply Rate. How often recipients respond to emails, demonstrating active interaction and relevance.
- Forward Rate. The frequency with which emails are forwarded to others, suggesting recipients find the content valuable enough to share.
- Number of Messages Automatically Processed as Spam.How often emails are filtered directly into spam folders by email providers.
- Spam Complaint Rate. The rate at which emails are marked as spam by recipients, negatively impacting domain reputation.
- Number of Messages Deleted Before Opening: Indicates disinterest or distrust before the content is even viewed.
- Number of Messages Marked as ‘Not Spam’ by the Recipient. This can help recover a domain’s reputation if initially misclassified as spam.
- Hard Bounces. Emails sent to non-existent or invalid email addresses, affecting sender reputation.
- Number of Messages that Fall into Spam Traps. Emails caught by special addresses that identify spammy behavior, severely affecting reputation.
Domain age has nothing to do with the date of registration. Domain age is established when a domain is crawled and indexed by Google for the first time. Therefore, if a domain is registered and parked for a few months and hasn’t been visited by someone other than Google or an active site, the “start date” for Google to calculate domain age occurs when the site is crawled and inserted into the system. However, this date is known to Google via past indexing to determine when the domain first came into existence to the world that is known to Google.
Is domain age a ranking advantage or disadvantage? Uncertain. From a Google standpoint, domain age is a consideration for ranking, but a comparative findings assessment renders the conclusion that domain age is not a consideration. However, the considerations from Google suggest that it is an advantageous situation for a site because of trust factors that it has been around for some time—but once again, content, relevancy, and user metrics reign supreme over domain age. The only time it would be an absolute advantage or disadvantage is in an exceptionally competitive niche where domain registration for 1 year versus 10 years could be the deciding factor. But other than that, it doesn’t hold a candle to the necessity of time and energy spent on continuous SEO and quality content.
With SEO—domain age and such—it has a minuscule role in trust and authority but not enough to sway as an overwhelming, deciding factor for legitimization. Things like content creation, UX, mobile responsiveness, and technical SEO will always win out. But domain age is more important for email marketing. Older email domains are simply trusted by ESPs more, which means better deliverability and less chance of hitting the spam folder. The notion that domain age is important for SEO but not for email marketing implies that these online marketing fields operate by different standards.Â
Where SEO championed standards would still champion content and user interaction to offer the best advantage, email marketing relies upon the importance of a clear domain, good sender reputation, and an incremental increase in age. In other words, it counts—but only in certain circumstances. And it counts or doesn’t based on the more permanent, circumstantial factors.
New domains are less trusted for deliverability. New domains have no performance history, meaning these domains are scrutinized by ESPs even more. When an email is scrutinized, it’s considered spam or it doesn’t make it to the inbox in the first place. New domains are more likely to trigger spam filters in the first place, as they have not yet shown their worth or engaged with best practices. In addition, something as simple as a bounce rate or someone marking something as spam will ruin the reputation from day one, making it that much more challenging to restore trust ever again.
Implement SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) to authenticate your email origins and ensure that the messages are not tampered with in transit. These are critical for building trust with ESPs.
You can easily set up recordings with free DMARC and SPF Record Generator.
Take out of your mailing list on a regular basis any unengaged subscribers, invalid email addresses, and opt-out recipients. This lowers bounce rates and spam complaints—two important indicators of a sender’s reputation.
Send more emails for new domains over time. A good sending reputation is established in part by starting with a smaller, more involved set of recipients. New domains especially benefit from this technique, called IP warming, but existing domains starting new campaign types also benefit.
Use email warm-up services like Warmy.io to automate this process
Ensure that the material in your emails is pertinent, worthwhile, and interesting to your readers. High open and click-through rates can help your domain’s reputation and are encouraging to ESPs.
To be notified when receivers flag your emails as spam, sign up for feedback loops with the big email service providers. Thanks to this input, you can deal with problems fast and modify your approach to reduce unpleasant encounters.
To determine which parts of your email—such as subject lines, content, and send times—work best for your audience, test them often. Better engagement and hence better deliverability can result from optimizing using performance data.
Warmy.io is a proprietary email warming service that can greatly enhance email warming efforts for successful email deliverability. For instance, one of the most unique aspects of Warmy.io is that it can automatically determine the age of your email domain relative to when it was created shortly after you set it up. Therefore, from such a determinable age, as well as other factors, Warmy.io uses the most time-tested and appropriate practices to warm your email domain to ESPs.
WHOIS lookup tools are one of the most straightforward methods for checking domain age. These services provide detailed information about a domain, including the registration date, which is essential for determining its age.Â
There are several dedicated tools available online that can instantly provide the age of a domain. These tools, such as SmallSEOTools, WebConfs, and SEOChat, require you to enter the domain name, and they fetch the registration date along with how long the domain has been active.
Select a Domain Age Checker Tool. Choose a tool such as SmallSEOTools’ Domain Age Checker or any other preferred tool that provides domain age information.
Enter the Domain Name. Navigate to the tool’s website and find the input box where you can type or paste the domain name whose age you want to check.
Initiate the Search. Click the “Check”, “Analyze”, or similar button to start the domain age check. The tool will query the database and retrieve the information related to the domain.
Review the Results. The tool will display results that typically include the domain’s age, the date it was first registered, and possibly the date it was last updated. Some tools may provide additional information such as the domain’s expiration date.
Interpret the Data. Understand that the age of your domain can influence your email deliverability and overall domain reputation. If your domain is relatively new, consider using services like Warmy.io to help establish and improve your domain’s reputation.
The Warmy.io Free Email Deliverability Test is an essential tool to determine whether you will be embarking on an email journey of engagement. It tests your email deliverability rate—and not to spoil anything, but what it says about your email effectiveness is in the reveal—and it tests if your domain is on any blacklist.Â
The deliverability test provided through Warmy.io determines whether you’re going to the inbox you desire, going to the spam folder, or disappearing altogether. This is critical information to possess in order to adjust your emailing tactics for guaranteed success. In addition, the test allows one to see if your domain is blacklisted; this is important to know to correct mistakes that prevent successful receipt. The test is simple to use. All one needs to provide is their email address, and Warmy.io takes care of the rest, providing extensive results in a digestible format.
Subsequently, Warmy.io is engaged for any suggestions and corrections based upon your results as well as suggestions for increased email deliverability and improved emailing strategy. By consistently utilizing such a resource, you will keep an eye on your email deliverability and make changes to ensure your inbox placement rates remain high for the foreseeable future. One such resource is Warmy.io’s Inbox Deliverability Checker.Â
It’s a fast and simple service free from technical operation, so any marketer or small to medium-sized business owner intent on maximizing their email can subsequently get the outreach and messaging they deserve. Email deliverability resources like Warmy’s allow you to diagnose and resolve deliverability problems before they become a thorn in your side and impress your email marketing ROI with higher engagement.
Managing and optimizing the age of your email domain requires a strategic approach. For new domains, understanding the challenges and employing techniques like domain warming can accelerate the establishment of a positive reputation. For older domains, maintaining good practices in email management ensures the continued benefit of a good reputation. Employing tools to monitor and improve email deliverability, such as Warmy.io’s Free Email Deliverability Test, is essential for both new and established domains.
Ultimately, a well-considered email strategy that takes into account the age of your domain and its ongoing reputation management can lead to enhanced deliverability, greater engagement, and more successful email marketing outcomes. Remember, in the digital age, the credibility and reliability of your email domain can make a significant difference in connecting effectively with your audience.
Read also – Nuances of Email Feedback Loops for Better Inbox Placement
What is domain age?
Domain age refers to the length of time a domain has been registered and active. In the context of email, it's used by email service providers to assess the reliability of emails sent from that domain.
Why does domain age matter?
Domain age matters because it influences trust and credibility. Older domains are often perceived as more trustworthy and are less likely to be flagged as spam, leading to better email deliverability.
Can new domains achieve good email deliverability?
Yes, new domains can achieve good deliverability, but they may face challenges due to a lack of historical reputation. Implementing good email practices, like using proper authentication and gradually increasing email volume, can help build a positive reputation over time.
How can I check my domain's age?
You can check your domain's age using WHOIS lookup services or dedicated domain age checker tools available online. These tools will provide the exact date of registration, helping you determine the age of your domain.
Does domain age affect security perceptions?
Yes, older domains with a long history of secure operations are generally perceived as safer by users and cybersecurity systems. New domains might be viewed with suspicion and require time and consistent secure practices to build similar trust.
How can I improve my domain's reputation despite its age?
Focus on maintaining high-quality email practices, use robust email authentication methods (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), keep a clean mailing list, and monitor your email engagement to improve your domain's reputation, regardless of its age.
