7 replies to this topic

[lister]

Does google have a look at whois data? If so what impact does that have do you think?

[2Clean]

Does google have a look at whois data? If so what impact does that have do you think?

Depends how black hat you're taking your SEO.

As they are a registrar so can pretty much see everything.

[ScottSalwolke]

Depends how black hat you're taking your SEO.

I'm not sure what that even means in relation to the question.

[Randy]

Google have never said, to my knowledge, how much or how little they use WhoIs. And there is a Privacy option one can purchase as an add-on to keep the data somewhat private. Of course we also don't know if the private data is really private from all, or just from public view. And as mentioned above Google is an ICANN approved registrar and has been for a couple of years ago now. Even though they do not sell domain names. I can think of no reason for them to go through the expense and hassle of becoming an official registrar if there wasn't some advantage to them in doing it. We cannot possibly know without becoming a registrar what additional info this makes available to Google.

If I had to guess I'd say they probably do make some use of WhoIs info. I would imagine what 2Clean mentioned is following this line of thought, since we've seen entire black hat networks wiped out, when the only real connection between the sites in the network is info in the WhoIs data. This however doesn't mean that it's the only thing they use WhoIs data to discover.

At the end of the day Google is basically a data mining organization. WhoIs information is data, so it would make sense for them to mine this data and use it to their best advantage.

[lister]

I thought that they might de-value a link if they notice that it comes from one of your sites to another one of your sites....

probably they dont care actually - why cant you link your sites together?

Do you reckon they pick up peoples names on that whois - i reckon they do.

[Randy]

There is such a limited amount of data in a WhoIs record that it would be child's play for them to extract it and run all sorts of queries on exact or similar matches. So for a data mining company with a very developed search algorithm in their back pocket we're talking a very easy thing to do.

I wouldn't worry on the linking between your own sites thing too much, as long as you're linking where it makes sense for Visitors. And this assumes your interlinking sites make up a smallish percentage of the overall backlinks your sites have attracted.

Two things I can tell you.

I have seen instances where entire networks were wiped out, where as I mentioned above the only common factor was some information in the WhoIs. Meaning the sites were with totally different hosts on totally different IP blocks and there was no commonality between the page templates and the sites didn't heavily link between each other. The only other common factor was that all of the sites were engaging in some very questionable tactics, but in some of those cases even the questionable techniques were different from site to site. Yet somehow Google still make the connection and zapped them all out of existence at the same moment in time.

On the other side of that coin I can tell you that all of my own sites have always contained quite a few bits of information in the WhoIs that is 100% identical, and a some information where the info is similar. For instance, I have only used 1 single email address for all of my domain registrations for the last 20 years. Every domain I've ever registered has my name, my address and this one email address. (Single email address because it gets spammed to death and I don't want to burn any others.)

With all of those similarities in the WhoIs I've never had a domain get penalized or banned. Why? Some would say it's because I've never done anything remotely black hat. And they'd be wrong. I test a lot of stuff just because I'm a curious george. Some of it I'm 100% positive falls outside of Google's TOS. But just because I'm testing something doesn't mean I leave it in place after the test. So in other words I test to see how easy or hard it is to fool Google, but even if it works I don't use it if it's clearly a no-no.

These testing domains also have my real name, real address and the same email address in the WhoIs. So obviously I've not yet reached the level where they consider me to be a bad guy, because even if I test stuff I don't unleash stuff that's just wrong. Who knows, maybe that realize this too and have decided that I'm not such a bad guy.

[OldWelshGuy]

I have always thought that the only reason Google became registrars is to get at the hidden data. As Randy says above, Why else?

It is the same old story though, if you are doing nothing wrong, does it matter

[rustybrick]

Google finally went on record on this http://www.seroundta...ves/020725.html

Seems like they do not use expire date of domain as a ranking metric.