Is NetworkSolutions lying or does this work?

[Simon]

I just renewed a domain at NetSol because it was too near its expiration date to transfer. When I was going through the shopping cart process there, I was shown an upsell message that I haven't seen at other registrars.

The message was shown as a graphic from a https location so I can't upload a copy to this post. The original is at https://www.networksolutions.com/pur...ad-in-cart.gif and if it doesn't load for you from that address you can see a copy here too.

Basically it says that registering a domain for 5 years or longer will cause search engines to perceive the domain to be more legitimate and therefore to rank it more highly.

So my question is whether or not there's some evidence of this being true. I can see if it's the only difference between two otherwise equivalent pages/sites, but as a general statement the way NetSol is using it, it just sound like deceptive marketing to me.