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Domain Age Checker

Find out how old any domain is, to the day: when its current registration began, when it expires and who the registrar is, straight from the registry. Then see what the registry can't tell you: whether the name lived before, from the Wayback Machine's copies and the first certificate ever issued for it.

Sources: each registry's RDAP or WHOIS server · the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine · Certificate Transparency logs (crt.sh)

Trydnsrobot.netgoogle.com

How to check a domain's age

Type the domain above (a full URL or an email address works too) and press Check age. Each domain age lookup asks the domain's registry when the current registration began and counts the age to the day: calendar years, months and days in UTC, not days divided by 365.

Then it looks for the name's older traces: the Wayback Machine's first copy of the homepage and the first TLS certificate logged for it. When either is older than the registration, the name existed before and the registry's date isn't the whole story.

Domain age checker result: the age to the day, registration and expiry dates, and the name's archive history on a timelineDomain age checker result: the age to the day, registration and expiry dates, and the name's archive history on a timelineThe ageYears, months and days since the current registration began, with the exact date.The timelineEvery month the Wayback Machine saved a copy, against the registration from its start to its expiry.Earlier lifeCopies or certificates older than the registration: the name was registered before.The three sourcesRegistry, archive and CT logs, one lane each with its count and first date; the rows under the strip link to each source so you can check it yourself.
A check of dnsrobot.net: registered in 2024, yet archived since 2002, so the name had an earlier life. Select a number to see what each part shows.

When was a domain first registered?

The domain registration date in the registry (its creation date) tells you when the current registration began. Renewals and moves to another registrar keep it; but when a domain expires and is deleted, the next registration starts a new record with a new date, and the old one is gone from the public record.

So the first registration ever leaves no date in WHOIS. What it leaves are traces. This checker reads the two public ones and compares them with the registry:

Our own name is a good example: the registry dates dnsrobot.net to 1 July 2024, but the Wayback Machine holds copies from November 2002 and a certificate was issued for it in March 2019. Someone else owned it first.

The name over time

Wayback Machine75 copies · since Nov 2002
RegistryVerisign · .net
Current registration · 2 years, 3 months2 years
Before this registration · 21 years, 7 months21 years
Certificates58 certificates · since Mar 2019
First certificate Mar 12, 2019· DigiCert Inc
dnsrobot.net as the checker saw it on 22 October 2026
  1. Copies before the registration. Someone ran a website on this name in 2002–2003 and again in 2014–2018: it was registered then, expired, and was deleted.
  2. The gaps. Years with no copy and no certificate are years the name was parked, unused or not registered at all. The registry keeps none of this.
  3. The current registration. The age the registry gives, and most tools show, starts here: 1 July 2024.

Registry (RDAP / WHOIS)

What it proves
The exact start of the current registration, the expiry and the registrar.
What it can miss
Any earlier registration of the same name.

Wayback Machine

What it proves
A website answered at the name on that day, so the name was registered then.
What it can miss
Sites it never crawled or that asked to be excluded; it starts in 1996. It never says who owned the name.

Certificate Transparency

What it proves
A certificate authority issued a certificate for the name on that day.
What it can miss
Certificates nobody logged before 2018, when Chrome made logging mandatory; names that never used HTTPS.

Why does a domain look younger than it is?

Because its age restarted. A domain that isn't renewed goes through grace and redemption periods and is then deleted; whoever registers it next, often a backorder service that was waiting for it, gets a new registry record with a new creation date. The name's past stays online in archives, which is why expired domains with history are bought. To see how close a name is to that point, the domain expiry checker dates each stage, from the registrar's grace to the day it could be released.

This checker shows the registry's date as the age and flags the gap as an earlier life, with the oldest trace it found.

The opposite holds too: an old date doesn't prove one owner. A domain that's sold, or auctioned by its registrar before it's deleted, keeps its creation date. symbolics.com, the first .com ever registered, still shows 15 March 1985.

What doesn't reset the age

  • Renewing the domain, even a few weeks late within the grace period.
  • Moving it to another registrar: the registry keeps the creation date (some also record the transfer's date).
  • Changing the owner, the nameservers or the hosting.

Website age checker: how old is a website?

A website can be younger than its domain (a name parked for years before anyone built on it) or older than the current registration (a site that lost its domain and got it back, or a dropped name rebuilt). The website's age is when it first appeared online: the Wayback Machine's first copy is the best public answer.

This checker shows both side by side, and the timeline shows whether the site has been online continuously or came and went: long quiet spells without a single copy usually mean the name was parked, unused or not registered.

Does domain age matter for SEO?

Not directly. Google's John Mueller has given the same answer since at least 2017: a domain's age is not a ranking factor, and Google's own SEO guide doesn't mention it. What an old site usually has is time to earn links, content and a reputation, and those are what count.

Where age does matter is history. Since March 2024 Google's spam policies name expired domain abuse: buying an expired domain to rank low-value content on its old reputation. Before buying one, check its archive copies for what it used to be.

What Google has said

“No, domain age helps nothing.”

John Mueller, Google · 5 July 2019

“Primarily those who want to sell you aged domains :-)”

John Mueller, asked who says domain age matters · 10 December 2023

Is a new domain a red flag?

Often, yes. Most phishing runs on domains the criminals registered themselves (77% of 1.5 million phishing domains Interisle counted in 2024–25), and such names tend to be used within days of registration. Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 found new domains about 18 times as likely as established top sites to be outright malicious.

A young domain isn't proof of fraud (every business starts with a new name), and an old one isn't proof of trust: criminals also age domains to look reputable. But a shop that claims decades of trading on a two-week-old domain is worth a second look. Check the age, then the WHOIS record, the SSL certificate and who hosts it.

18×

as likely as established top sites to be outright malicious: 1.27% of newly registered domains against 0.07%

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, data from March–May 2019

Why don't some domains show a registration date?

ICANN's rules make every generic domain (.com, .org, .net…) publish its registration and expiry dates in RDAP, but country registries set their own rules, and some leave the dates out. For these the checker dates the name by its earliest trace instead:

DomainRegistryWhat its public record shows
.deDENICRDAP and WHOIS show the last change only. Since December 2025 DENIC's web lookup shows the registration date.
.chSWITCHNo dates in RDAP. Swiss law makes its web lookup show the date the name was first allocated.
.auauDANo creation, renewal or expiry date at all, by policy: only the last change.
.euEURidWHOIS shows no dates, and .eu has no RDAP server in IANA's list.

How to check domain age in bulk

The bulk domain age checker takes up to 50 domains: switch to Bulk, paste them (one per line, or a column copied from a sheet or CSV) and press Check all. Each row fills in as its registry answers: the registration date, the age, the expiry, the registrar and the first archived copy, flagged when it predates the registration.

Sort by age, then copy or download the table as CSV. The link in the address bar holds the whole list, so you can share it or run the same check again later.

Domain age API

The same data as JSON, free, for scripts: the registry record from our WHOIS API (the age fields are in it), the history as one line per source, and bulk checks as one line per domain as they land.

The registry record
$ curl "https://dnsrobot.net/api/whois?q=google.com"
{
  "domain": "google.com", "registeredOn": "1997-09-15T04:00:00Z",
  "expiresOn": "2028-09-14T04:00:00Z", "updatedOn": "2019-09-09T15:39:04Z",
  "age": { "days": 10629, "years": 29, "remainingDays": 44, … },
  "registrar": { "name": "MarkMonitor Inc.", "ianaId": "292", … }, …
}
The name's history
$ curl "https://dnsrobot.net/api/domain-history?domain=dnsrobot.net"
{"t":"wayback","status":"ok","first":"2002-11-25T23:58:06Z","last":"2026-09-28T04:05:01Z",
 "years":{"2002":[0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0], …},"codes":{…},"domain":"dnsrobot.net"}
{"t":"ct","status":"ok","first":{"date":"2019-03-12T00:00:00.000Z","issuer":"DigiCert Inc","id":1279273520},
 "count":58, …,"domain":"dnsrobot.net"}
{"t":"done","ms":1840,"domain":"dnsrobot.net"}
Up to 50 domains
$ curl -X POST https://dnsrobot.net/api/domain-age \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"domains": ["google.com", "wikipedia.org"]}'
{"t":"start","total":2,"inputs":["google.com","wikipedia.org"]}
{"t":"row","i":1,"domain":"wikipedia.org","status":"ok","registeredOn":"2001-01-13T00:12:14.754Z",
 "registrar":"MarkMonitor Inc.","archive":{"status":"ok","first":"2001-03-31T…","captures":…}, …}
{"t":"row","i":0,"domain":"google.com", …}
{"t":"done","ms":2310}

Domain Age Checker FAQ

How do I check the age of a domain?

Enter the domain or a URL in the domain name age checker above and press Check age. The checker asks the domain's registry for the start of its current registration and shows the age in years, months and days, with the exact date, the expiry and the registrar. It also shows the Wayback Machine's first copy and the first certificate for the name, which can be older.

How is domain age calculated?

From the registry's creation date to today, in calendar years, months and days in UTC. A domain registered on 15 September 1997 was 29 years, 1 month and 7 days old on 22 October 2026. Some tools divide days by 365 or round to whole years, so their answers can differ by days or a year.

Can I find the original registration date of a domain?

Not from WHOIS if the domain was ever deleted: a new registration replaces the old date. Its traces survive, though. The Wayback Machine's first copy shows the name was in use by then, and Certificate Transparency logs list its certificates, all of them since 2018 and many older ones. This checker reads both and flags when they're older than the registration.

Does domain age affect SEO rankings?

Not as such. Google's John Mueller wrote in 2019 that domain age “helps nothing”, and in 2023 that the people who say it matters are “primarily those who want to sell you aged domains”. Older sites rank because they've had time to earn links and build content. Buying an expired domain to rank on its old reputation counts as spam at Google since 2024.

What is a good domain age?

There's no threshold that search engines reward. For trust, older is usually reassuring: a shop or sender on a domain registered last week deserves more checks than one online for ten years. For buying an expired domain, the age matters less than its history: what the archive shows it was, and whether it was ever used for spam.

Does transferring or renewing a domain reset its age?

No. A renewal only moves the expiry date, and a transfer to another registrar keeps the creation date (a .com transfer usually adds a year to the expiry). Selling the domain keeps it too. The age resets only when the domain is deleted and registered again, which creates a new registration with a new date.

Why does this domain show a different age elsewhere?

Three usual reasons: other tools round to whole years or count days divided by 365; some read the registrar's copy of the record, which can lag the registry's; and some quote an age from the archive, not from the registration. This checker shows the registry's date as the age and the archive's and CT logs' dates beside it.

How can I tell if a domain was registered before?

Check it here: if the Wayback Machine has copies, or the CT logs have certificates, older than the current registration, the checker flags an earlier life and shows the date of the oldest trace. Long gaps in the archive timeline, years without a single copy, usually mark when the name was dropped.

How do I check how old a website is?

Look at the first archived copy: the Wayback Machine has saved websites since 1996, and its first copy of the homepage is the earliest public proof the site existed. The checker shows that date beside the domain's registration, with every month that has a copy on the timeline.

Can I check the age of many domains at once?

Yes: switch to Bulk and paste up to 50 domains, one per line or as a column from a sheet. Each row shows the registration date, the age, the expiry, the registrar and the first archived copy, and the table copies or downloads as CSV.

Why doesn't a .de domain show its registration date?

DENIC, the .de registry, leaves the dates out of its RDAP and WHOIS answers; since December 2025 only its web lookup shows when a .de was registered. .ch and .au leave them out of RDAP too. For these names the checker shows how long the name has been in use, from the first archived copy or certificate, and links the registry's lookup.

Is this domain age checker free?

Yes: the domain age checker tool needs no account and no CAPTCHA. Our server asks the registry and the Wayback Machine for you, so they never see your address. Your browser asks crt.sh for the certificates itself, unless our server already keeps the answer, which makes repeat checks instant. We don't log who checked what.

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