Domain Registration Info and Its Effect on Google Rankings

Posted • December 16, 2008 • Comments Off

Can Your Domain Registration Info Effect Your Google Rankings

I ran across some very interesting information about domain registration information and whether is is private or not and how it affects your Google Rankings. This is what I found and my opinion of its validity.

Does Changing Domain Registrar Info (Private Whois) Impact Google Rankings?

The topic of does domain registration impact your search engine rankings is nothing new. We have covered this topic here at least a handful of times, especially since Google became a registrar. But a new WebmasterWorld thread has several case studies from SEOs on the topic.

It all started when senior WebmasterWorld member, SEOPTI, said that he forgot to use private whois information when renewing his domain. His domain name went under the real information and then soon after he said, Google devalued his incoming links by 80% or more.

As you might imagine, many are skeptical.

Another senior member, wyweb, said:
I removed privacy protection from 6 or 7 domains last summer, all with 5 and 6 PR. There has been absolutely no change in either PR or traffic levels.

Senior member, CainIV, said something similar:
Personally, some of my domains are protected and some are not. I did not notice a ranking change when switching to privacy, however, none have ever reverted.

Forum administrator, Tedster, said:
I have a client who changed the legal ownership of the domain (and business) twice within the past year. No changes in the SERPs followed on either time.

Other clients in the past have purchased other online businesses, changed the domain’s Whois to reflect that, and also seen no ranking changes. Based on that, I’m thinking this is not an open-and-shut case of Whois changes influencing ranking.

Seems like this isn’t as clear cut as we would like. Google might or might not reset the domain based on probably several variables.

Since the post on Search Engine Roundtable more discussions have been added to the thread on WebmasterWorld.

barney
I highly doubt this was the case. Google doesn’t use whois info to based its ranking.

azguy
I highly doubt this was the case. Google doesn’t use whois info to based its ranking.

Google did not become a registrar several years back for nothing. You can’t register a domain with Google,so why would they become a registrar. Hmmmmmm……

If age of a domain is playing a role, they are using whois data to get the age. You can bet they use it for other things as well.

JohnDoealias
Yeap. Google use whois for many things.

SEOPTI
They definitely used the whois data in this case. I can clearly see the incoming links (PR) have been devalued by about 80% if not all of them at the time the non-private whois info came into play.

It’s a site with only 5-7 URLs (offering a free widget) so I can rule out a lot of things. This site is 5 years old and never had any problems.

I reverted back to private and will see what happens.

potentialgeek
Whois privacy services are usually well-labeled. Google could easily distinguish between whois privacy and an individual/corporation. Its patent on this topic says it can devalue links if the content of the site page is different from the old links.

You should get a whois service that automatically renews whois privacy. Enom, for example, has a setting to auto renew privacy 30 days before the domain expires.

On the topic of Google and whois, one site in my sector that is #2 in Google for a very competitive keyword uses whois privacy.

I suspect there are fewer potential problems witht whois privacy related to Google than some of us might imagine. It’s one of the best anti-spam services I ever got.

It appears that the outstanding opinion on this thread is that the answer to the question Does Changing Domain Registrar Info (Private Whois) Impact Google Rankings? is NO! I whole heartedly agree.

Late,
Gary Pool

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