Privacy: Is Whois info used to help establish an admin relationship between sites in addition to host/IP etc ?
-
Hi
Do you think Google looks at WhoIs details as a contributing factor to establishing an adminsitrative relationship between two domains (in addition to being hosted on similar hosts/IP blocks etc), and in regard to linkbuilding would having teh same whois details on both sites have a negative effect or be perfectly ok (if the sites are on different hosts/ip blocks) ?
Also do you think whois privacy turned on has a negative effect on trust and subsequent seo ?
Considering the answer to the above two questions: Do you think its a good or bad idea to have domain reg/whois ‘privacy’ turned on for a site of curated content relating to the project/primary sites niche, and linking to this site for contextual link benefit ?
Im building out a site of curated content that i want to perform well in-itself as well as providing backlink benefit to the primary site but worried if they both have same whois details will cause seo problems or would that only be if also had same host/ip footprint ?
Should i enable whois privacy, use a different address for reg, or actually make a point of using the same whois details for transparency ?
All Best
Dan -
cool cheers
-
I would personally, but not for any SEO benefits or trying to hide anything to Google. Just because I can and stops people snooping.
-Andy
-
Hi there
I really don't think it matters overall in the grand scheme so long as you are providing a valuable experience with your content and take proper steps to eliminate duplicate content issues.
To reference Andy below, there are sites that get tons of organic rankings / traffic with private Whois sites, and the same for public Whois. In the grand scheme of thinks, if you are linking naturally and not abusing anchor text and giving credit where it is due, you should be fine.
Hope this helps!
-
So IYO prob is best if i turn privacy on rather than 'potentially' show an administrative relationship by having same details ?
-
great thanks Andy !
-
Thanks Patrick !
So having whois data same for two interlinking sites could negate or heavily reduce any link benefit since they do likely use it to determine administrative relationship ? so should turn privacy on except that can also reduce trust in the domain!
So any ideas which is the least worse option if that is the case ? reducing the trust via privacy on option or admitting an admin relationship between the sites via whois option ?
All Best
Dan
-
So your saying that if i use 'who is privacy on' for the new site, it shouldn't have a negative effect for that sites seo
Absolutely. I have a wide range of clients, some of who like to hide their personal details and others who don't. None have any negative effects for either. Google is more interested in how good a site is, rather than who the admin contact is.
Can I just add, if there is actual test data that I haven't seen, I would be very interested to have a look.
-Andy
-
Definitely true! I was just stating it for the reference of Matt talking about Whois data back then to reference information.
-
Just be a little cautions with info dating back to 2006-2007. You can't rely on that now.
-
Thanks for the quick response Andy !
So your saying that if i use 'who is privacy on' for the new site, it shouldn't have a negative effect for that sites seo BUT Google doesn't look at 'WhoIs' info to establish an administrative relationship between two sites anyway, hence there's no need to use it since same whois details shouldn't cause any issues?
-
Hi there
Cyrus gave a great answer to this a few years back. You can read that here.
That being said, some people think Whois data is used as a ranking factor (6, 8, 9, 63) or at least used in some ranking factors.
Matt Cutts has stated as well:
"…When I checked the whois on them, they all had “whois privacy protection service” on them. That’s relatively unusual. …Having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so."
In my opinion, it's better to be open than hide information. But that's upto you to do the research and see what best suits you.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
I would say this is a resounding no to both questions here Dan. I have never seen anything that would suggest this and can imagine it would be full of problems for Google to try and do.
Use WHOIS privacy if you don't want anyone to see who the site belongs to, but that is as far as your concerns need go
-Andy
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
When to use mod rewrite / canonical / 301 redirect
Hello, I have taken over the management of a site which has a big problem with duplicate content. The duplicate content is caused by two things: Upper and lower case urls e.g: www.mysite.com/blog and www.mysite.com/Blog The other reason is the use of product filters / pagination which mean you can get to the same 'page' via different filters. The filters generate separate URLs. http://www.mysite.com/casestudy
Technical SEO | | Barques-Design
http://www.mysite.com/casestudy/filter?page=1
http://www.mysite.com/casestudy/filter?solution=0&page=1
http://www.mysite.com/casestudy?page=1
http://www.cpio.co.uk/casestudy/filter?solution=0" Am I right to assume that for the case sensitive URLs I should use a 301 redirect because I only want the lower page to be shown? For the issue with dynamic URLs should we implement a mod-rewrite and 301 to one page? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Mat0 -
No google traffic for this site? Help?
Hi We have not done this web site http://climateacs.co.uk but have now picked it up and its getting no traffic what so ever from google do you think its been blacklisted? I have added it to my webmaster tools and there are no manual actions on it and most of the backlinks on google webmaster tools are from yell.com. However when I run it on opensiteexplorer I am seeing some chinese type links?? It is not really showing many search queries at all when you view them in webmaster tools under United Kingdom. I was going to start citation building for the address to help support the google places entry but just wanted to see what other peoples opinion was really on this site? Thanks Tracy
Technical SEO | | dashesndots0 -
Can someone PLEASE help me find a solution to use a custom search engine for iPhones?? Thanks in advance!
Hey mozzers, I'm in quite the pickle today and would really appreciate some help! i need a way to have my members set their default custom search engine on their iPhones and androids to our sites search engine. Google chrome does on desktops but not iPhones. Thanks for your time/help, Tyler Abernethy
Technical SEO | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Have my site been penalised ?
Hi, I recently hired a link builder (who works for a digital marketing agency and wanted to earn some extra cash ) to do some link building for me on keyword Carpet Cleaner Hire Basically , May my ranking for this work has moved from 29 up to 13 , then down to 500 + and now up to 67 ?. It's been all over the place and I am worried that maybe google thinks its unnatural or to many links etc. I looked at some of the work this chap did and there was a log of bookmarks done , apparently to increase social awareness and some articles on random forums I never heard of but the articles didn't look to good and in my eyes were a little spammy.. I don't have any messages in WMT saying I have been penalised or anything but I am naturally worried that this chap may have caused damaged and that I was manually penalised. I have since asked him to stop immediately.. does this sound normal for the ranking to be all over the place in this manner when link building ? How can I tell if I have been manually penalized in any way ? What;s the general consensus ?. Should I contact google or leave it and see what happens ? Other keywords seems to be okay though. Any advice much appreciated. thanks Sarah.
Technical SEO | | SarahCollins1 -
Is a 302 useful here?
We have a site that had one super successful viral video a couple of years back and basically the site needs a ton of work to even be functional. We don't have the time or the resources to even touch it. Our video is still getting tons of views today and I'm fairly certain it's the only reason the site still gets traffic. Most of the views come from youtube which prompts them to check out the site. We plan on going back to the site at a later date, but for now wanted to redirect it to another site of ours. In this case is it best practice to 302? or is a 301 still the proper solution?
Technical SEO | | ClaytonKendall0 -
Http:// vs http://www.
Why is it that when I run an "On Page Optimization Keyword Report" for my website I get a different score when using http://www.tandmkitchens.com vs http://tandmkitchens.com. My keyword is "Kitchen Remodeling" http://www.tandmkitchens.com scores an A http://tandmkitchens.com scores a B It's the same page yet one url scores higher than the other. Any help! Thanks
Technical SEO | | fun52dig
Gary0 -
Should I create mini-sites with keyword rich domain names pointing to my main site?
Hi, I'm new to seomoz (and seo in general) and loving it so far. My main domain name is more of a brandname than a search engine friendly list of keywords. I rank well for some keywords I optimized for, and less so for the more competitive keywords. I was wondering if making one page minisites hosted on keyword rich domain names could help in this respect? What I want to do is just have a single page with a few paragraphs of content and links to the main site. I am not looking for links to boost the main site, just for the minisites to do better for several keywords. Will this help? Is this ok, or against some Google policy? Can this hurt the main site rankings? Thank you! **Edit: **I noticed that sites ranking above me on the first page for some keywords have much less on-page elements than my page, have about the same domain trust and also very little inbound links. The only factor I can see is the exact match of keywords in the domain name.
Technical SEO | | Eladla1 -
Problem with my site
the site is casino.pt we created the site 7-8 month ago, we started to push it by good and natural links (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/www.casino.pt/a!links!!filter!all!!source!external!!target!page), links in sites with content rich and most of them related to gambling and sport topics. During the first 3-5 months, the rankings were better and better, after the 6 months, the site lose all its rankings. Aditional details http://www.casino.pt/robots.txt http://www.google.pt/#hl=pt-PT&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=805&q=site:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.casino.pt&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&fp=2651649a33cd228 no critical errors in google webmaster tools any idea how can I fix it? thanks
Technical SEO | | Yaron530