When purchasing a domain, you might be wondering what name would be good for your business, whether online or offline. One thing you may have been wondering about is whether a new domain or an older domain that has been around for a while would be better.

The factors to be weighed out in the purchasing of domains usually has to do with the name of your domain. Does it fit what you are selling or the subject of your site? If so then a older name may or may not be good for you.

The advantages of a older domain is that many times they contain backlinks that can bring you traffic right away. Google also considers older domains to be of more relevance because it has established itself by aging. If you look in the right places you can find older domains at a good price from a third party. It all depends what you are willing to pay, but be careful because you may be overpaying what a domain is worth.

Here are some things to look for before buying an older domain rather than a new one.

• Type the URL in google. Example: domain.com and see if there are any links to it.
• Check the wayback machine to see what was on it before.
• Ask the third party for stats on current traffic.
• What extension is on the name. A .com is more valuable than .net (don’t settle)
• How long has the name existed?
• Is there a bad history of a spammer using this domain.

It is always important to also make sure that no spammer has been using the domain you are interested in to cause it to be penalized in Google or on email blacklists, so do your research first.