How it works
Paste one domain, or a list of up to 20. Full URLs work too: the checker keeps only the domain (blog.example.co.uk/post becomes example.co.uk). For each one it does two lookups, in parallel:
- The registry. It asks the registry that runs the domain's extension for its record, through RDAP, the structured successor to WHOIS that ICANN now requires for every generic extension. For extensions without RDAP, such as
.io, it falls back to the registry's WHOIS server. You get the registration date, the expiry date, the last time the record changed and the registrar. - The Wayback Machine. It finds the oldest capture of the homepage that loaded successfully. That's the best public record of when a website actually appeared on the name.
Then it compares the two and flags anything worth a second look. Results are sorted oldest first.
A worked example
Say you're about to pitch three blogs in your niche, or a seller has offered you a paid link on one of them. You check them together:
| Domain | Registered | First archived | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|---|
example-trailblog.com | March 2011 | June 2011 | A site that has been live on this name for about fifteen years. |
example-gearguide.com | August 2023 | February 2016 | Older than its registration: the name lapsed and was registered again in 2023. Its backlinks from before then were earned by a previous site. |
example-runtips.net | September 2026 | No captures | Two months old and never archived. |
None of these dates makes a site good or bad. But the second one is the pattern behind most "high authority" sites built on expired domains, and you'd want to look at its old captures before trusting its link profile. The third one is simply too new to judge.
Domain age vs website age
People search for "domain age" when they usually mean "how long has this site been around". Those are two different questions:
- Domain age starts the day the name was registered. It comes from the registry and is hard to fake.
- Website age starts the day a site appeared. The closest public record is the first Wayback Machine capture, which is a lower bound: the site existed by then, and may be a little older if nobody archived it early.
When the registration is much older than the first capture, the name was probably parked or unused for a while. When the first capture is older than the registration, the name has changed hands through expiry. The checker tells you which case you're looking at.
What domain age is useful for
- Vetting a site before you pitch it. A blog that has published on the same name for ten years is a different prospect from one registered last spring. It's a quick first filter before you spend time on a pitch. The similar websites finder gives you a list of sites in your niche to check.
- Before paying for a link. If someone quotes you a price for a placement, check whether the site's history belongs to it. Re-registered expired domains are a common way to dress up a new site as an old one. Our data on what publishers actually charge and the backlink price calculator help with the other half of that decision.
- Checking whether a shop is legitimate. A store whose domain was registered three weeks ago, offering big discounts, deserves caution. Age isn't proof either way, but it's one of the quickest signals there is.
- Buying a domain. See the original registration date and whether the name has been dropped and re-registered before.
What it can't tell you
- Some registries don't publish dates.
.deis the best-known example. For those you get the Wayback Machine date only. - Privacy services hide the owner, not the dates. Registrant names and emails are redacted for most domains since GDPR, so the checker doesn't show them. Registration and expiry dates are still public.
- The Wayback Machine doesn't archive everything. A small site might have been live for a year before its first capture, and some sites block archiving entirely. "No captures" means "not archived", not "never existed".
- Age isn't quality. Google has said domain age by itself isn't a ranking factor. An old domain with thin content is still thin content.
Checking sites one at a time gets slow
Domain age is one of a dozen things you look at when you decide whether a site is worth a link request: whether it publishes in your topic, whether it still updates, who to contact, what to say. Mentiohunt does that part continuously: it finds backlink opportunities for your site and runs the outreach up to the first reply, then hands the conversation to you. The free preview shows a few opportunities and why each one fits, without sending anything.