Domain age
public registration records.
Looks up when a link's domain was registered, in the public registration records every registry publishes over RDAP. Fraud pages often use domains that are days old.
01What it does
The server finds the registry for the link's top-level domain in IANA's public list (data.iana.org/rdap/dns.json, read again every 24 hours) and asks it for the registration date of the link's registered domain. A domain registered in the last 30 days gives a Caution finding such as "example.com was registered 3 days ago"; an older one gives an OK note with its age. The date is always shown with the name it belongs to.
- Some country domains publish no RDAP records, for example
.sk,.de,.euand.io. For them the result carries the note "No registration date is published for .sk": the age is not known, and it is never shown as old. When a registry answers without a date, Domain age is listed as not checked ("no registration data"). - Sites on shared hosting platforms (a site under a platform's own domain, such as
github.io,pages.dev,web.app,vercel.appormyshopify.com) are not looked up: the platform's age says nothing about the site. - Only registries reachable over https are asked. At most one request per second goes to each registry, and answers are cached.
- A young domain also raises a page that asks for sign-in or payment details to Danger in the link check.
02Switch it on
Console, Domain age (RDAP): turn on Use RDAP. There is no key and nothing to test.
03Cost
None. RDAP is a public service of the domain registries. Registries may slow down a server that asks too often; the server caches answers.