Two completely different timestamps. Most SEOs conflate them. Google doesn’t.
Registration date
WHOIS record creation. The moment someone paid a registrar. Says nothing about what happened after. A domain registered in 2008 could have sat parked for 15 years. No content. No crawls. No signals.
Registration date is public, easily gamed, and trivially purchased. This is why Google ignores it as a direct signal.
First indexed date
When Googlebot first crawled and stored a page in the index. This requires actual content existing. Actual server responding. Actual page worth remembering.
First index date marks when the domain started generating signals Google cares about – content quality, link acquisition, user behavior.
Why the distinction matters
A domain registered 2010, first indexed 2023 has 13 years of registration age and 1 year of index age.
Which matters? The index age. That’s when the signal clock started. The registration years were empty calories.
What Google actually tracks
- First crawl date for the domain
- First indexed page timestamp
- Continuous crawl history gaps
- Content change velocity over time
- Link acquisition timeline
A domain with consistent index presence since 2015 has 9 years of observable behavior. Google can evaluate patterns, stability, growth trajectory. A domain indexed last month has no track record regardless of WHOIS date.
The expired domain trap
Buyers check registration date. See 2009. Assume authority.
They don’t check whether Google reset the index history when the domain dropped. Many expired domains lose continuity – Google treats the new content as fresh start, not continuation.
Registration transferred. Index history didn’t.
How to verify index history
Wayback Machine shows content history but not Google’s index status.
Better signals:
- Search
site:domain.com– current index status - Check Ahrefs/Semrush historical data – when did they first see pages?
- Request Search Console access before purchase – crawl stats reveal true history
- Look for cached versions with dates
When do the two dates align?
Legitimate businesses registering domains for immediate use. Register Monday, build site Tuesday, indexed by Friday. Registration and index dates within weeks.
When they diverge significantly – years apart – something happened. Parking. Speculation. Abandonment. Penalty. Each scenario carries different implications for the domain’s actual authority.
What if a domain was indexed, then dropped, then re-indexed?
The gap matters. Short gap (months) – Google likely maintains continuity. Long gap (years) – probable reset. Penalty gap – definite reset, possibly with lingering distrust.
Continuous index presence beats intermittent presence. A domain indexed 2015-2025 without gaps outranks a domain indexed 2010-2012, dropped, re-indexed 2023.
Consistency signals legitimacy. Gaps signal problems.
Can you manipulate first indexed date by backdating content or faking crawl history?
No. Google controls the timestamp. You control nothing.
Changing server dates doesn’t affect when Googlebot actually visited. Faking Last-Modified headers might influence crawl frequency but not historical index records. Google’s systems log when they first saw content, not when you claim it existed.
Some try publishing content, waiting for indexation, then changing dates in structured data or visible timestamps. Google distinguishes between declared dates and discovery dates. The index record reflects discovery.
The only “manipulation” that works: actually publishing content earlier. Time machines don’t exist. Neither do shortcuts here.