Domain Age Checker

Mostly as a trust signal. Phishing and fraud domains are typically days or weeks old, because they get taken down and replaced constantly. A domain registered fifteen years ago is not automatically safe, but a domain registered last Tuesday that is asking for your bank details deserves suspicion.

Barely, and less than the folklore suggests. Google has said repeatedly that age itself is not a ranking factor. What correlates with age is everything that accumulates over time — links, content, established behaviour — which is a different claim from age being valuable in itself.

For most domains they are the same event. Where they differ, it is usually because a domain was allowed to expire and was re-registered later — the registry may then show a new creation date, so a "young" domain can have a long history under different ownership.

RDAP is the modern replacement for WHOIS: structured JSON with defined field names, proper internationalisation, and standardised access controls. WHOIS returns free text that varies by registry and needs per-registry parsing. Registries are required to support RDAP, so it is the more reliable source.

Registrant details are largely redacted since GDPR, and many registries now publish only the registrar, dates and status. Some country-code registries do not offer RDAP at all, in which case the lookup returns nothing rather than guessing.

They are EPP status codes describing what operations are permitted. "clientTransferProhibited" is a registrar lock preventing unauthorised transfers and is a good thing to see. "pendingDelete" or "redemptionPeriod" mean the domain has expired and is on its way to being released.