How old is a website?
The date an address was registered is one of the few facts a scam site cannot easily fake. It tells you how long the name has existed, not who runs it now.
Short answer. Look up the address's registration date in the registry's record (over RDAP or WHOIS). An address registered in the last month is a warning sign; one registered years ago is only weak comfort, because addresses are sold and taken over. Run the checks on an address or a message: our checker reads the registry's own record and shows the date.
How to find the date
Each address has a record at its registry that includes the date it was first registered. You can read it in three ways:
- Our checker reads the registry's own record over RDAP, the current standard, and shows the date and its age in days.
- ICANN Lookup shows the record for addresses that end in .com, .net, .org and the other generic endings.
- Country endings such as .uk, .ca, .au, .nz, .ie and .in are run by each country's own registry. Most publish a lookup, and some show less, or no dates.
Look for "Registered", "Created" or "Registration date". Ignore "Updated" and "Expires": they change with every renewal.
Why a new address is a warning sign
Fake shops and phishing pages are often set up days before they are used and dropped soon after. Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 uses 32 days as its line for a "newly registered domain" (Unit 42, 20 August 2019). Our checker grades an address younger than that as a warning sign, and one younger than a year as worth knowing. The one-year line is our own, not a published figure.
Normal causes. Every honest business has a new address once. A new address on a site that sells nothing, or one that belongs to a business you can verify another way, is not a concern on its own. Our own address was registered on 28 October 2026, and our checker grades it the same way.
What the age cannot show
- A change of owner. Old addresses are sold, and expired ones are bought by strangers who keep the old name for its history.
- Sites on a platform. A shop at yourshop.myshopify.com, or any address on a website builder, has the platform's age, not the shop's. Our checker says so and does not grade it.
- Who runs it. Many registration records now hide the owner's name and contact details for privacy, so a lookup rarely tells you who owns a site.
A site's past life
The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has saved copies of many websites since the 1990s. Type the address there to see when it was first saved and what it looked like.
- A shop that says "trading since 1998" but was first saved last month is worth questioning.
- A first copy that shows a different business (a dentist, a blog in another language) means the address had an earlier owner.
- No copy at all is common for small and new sites, and proves nothing.
Our test copy reads the Archive's first copy for you. The public site does not yet, while we ask the Archive whether its terms allow it.
Where a product helps
No product is needed here. The lookups above are free, and paid domain tools add history that matters to people who buy addresses, not to someone deciding whether to trust a shop.
About this guide
Our checks that this guide explains: Address age, Past life. Each quote was read on the source's own page on the date shown. Legit Signals has no affiliate links: no company pays to be named here.
Last reviewed: 29 October 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us