What Parts Of Domain Registration Change Affect Rank
-
Could changing one's physical address for a domain or going from public to private registration have a negative affect on rank? Other factors? Thanks!
-
Understood. I'm not talking about buying and selling websites. Just owning it and making changes to the registration... private from public and street address. Thanks!
-
I think the context is hugely influential on how much registration change matters.
Let's say i buy Site X from M Johnson, and I don't change anything on the website. In this case I am sure that nothing will happen.
Let's say i buy Site X from M Johnson, and changes all the content on the website. In fact, I turn an old NGO website into a pharmaceutical website selling all sorts of pills. In this case, I am sure the registration data matters as it helps Google understand something shady is going on.
-
So nobody seems to think going from public to private or changing an address matters?
Of the two, I can see how one could reason that going from public to private is kind of a trust-decreasing step.
An address change seems to me to be normal business.
-
What about for link farms? If someone were to buy up a couple hundred websites and then use them to promote a select few websites you don't think that whois data is looked at?
-
Yeah it's to try to stop people buying and selling domains based on their PR. It doesn't seem to happen all of the time but an ownership change can (apparently) mean the trust that the domain got for its age gets reset, or at least reduced.
You can't have private unless you're an individual and not a company can you?
-
Makes sense, though I didn't know he said that. When did he say this?
-
Matt Cutts has indicated that they use whois info to try to know when sites have been sold and 301'd for link juice. Other than that, I would not expect your whois data to affect your ranking.
-
No I don't think so. Making your domain private just keeps your data out of sites like WHOIS. I'll double check that and let you know if I'm wrong.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Change theme or domain first?
I bought a new domain and I want to use it instead of my current domain for my website. I also want to change my theme. Which should I do first? At the time I have my new domain forwarded to my current domain.
Technical SEO | | tfuentez0 -
Forwarding kw rich domains to main domain
Hi My client has a clutch of kw rich domains that want to point to main domain, apart from being good for promotional reasons is there any seo benefit for doing so (i know there used to be years ago but under impression hasn't been any benefit for a long while) Most importantly though can any bad come from doing this ? Best Rgds Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
What are the pros and cons of changing my domain from .com to .us in Google webmaster tools?
Hi, I'm migrating my site from a .com domain to local country domains. I'm wondering what to consider if i chose to move the .com to .us domain. What should I consider before deciding? BR
Technical SEO | | Quru0 -
Whats happened to my rankings
Hey everyone, I hope someone might be able to help me figure out what has gone wrong here. I have a website which was slowly growing in rankings. The domain used was a .net However, It is a UK based business so I shifted this to a .co.uk domain and then followed googles advice in webmaster tools for moving address. ie, copy site, verify in GWMT and then 301 the old site. Now the .net had 71 indexed pages out of 73. But after 2 months .co.uk only has 41 out of 73 indexed. At the end of last week I did change the theme on my website although the content / urls have all remained the same. I have gone to check my rankings this morning and the site has totally bombed. Even the own brand name does not ranking in top 10 pages. I have not done an major link building at all yet for the site and any links that are there are all high quality from industry related authority sites. Looking at GWMT the latest links all look ok, nothing spammy but one thing I did notice is that it shows the .net domain providing 193 links via 301and also individually a great deal of the links that point to .net but have shown in .co.uk What I would like to know if have I actually done something wrong? Should I just kill the 301 (i am loathed to do this as a few of the links to this took me a long time to get), after spending a great deal of money developing my site and just starting to see some nice progress in the natural rankings and google has gone and pulled the carpet from under me. I would understand if I was doing something wrong but I have made strenuous efforts to ensure the linking on this site is whiter that white. Oh, I have had no warnings in my messages at all. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | easyrider20 -
What is the advantage of using sub domains instead of pages on the root domain?
Have a look at this example http://bannerad.designcrowd.com/ For each category of design, they have a landing page on the sub domain. Wouldn't it be better to have them as part of the same domain? What is the strategy behind using sub domains?
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
I am able to point an old domain name to part of my site
hi, i have a domain name to a site that i have but i am thinking of closing that site down and transfer it to a site that is popular. I want to know if i am allowed to point the domain name to a section of my site and if so would it benefit my site or should i just continue running the other site and make it better. would the links to that site be transfered to my site any advice would be great.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Domain Forwarding Help
A friend of mine is a domainer and he wants to forward 21 parked niche specific domains to my site for extra type-in traffic. This will turn out to be 30 extra hits a day. Obviously, since these are parked domains, the SEO benefits are none, we just want the traffic. My questions is how to do it. These are his parked domains, and will not be redirected forever, is a 302 redirect the best plan here? He planned on just going into his hosting/domain admin and selecting "forward domain" -- is this ok too? Also, he would prefer to forward these domains to a single domain he owns, and then forward that single domain he owns to my domain. So someone who types in one of these 21 domains will go typindomain.com ---> hisredirectsite.com ---->mysite.com any implications here? What is the best option and how to do it? Thanks
Technical SEO | | terran0 -
Exact match domains
I know buying new websites hoping to 301 redirect them to achieve higher rankings before they’re established is not a good idea, but what about uploading a info pages + on-page SEO + some link-building and when the site is established (it ranks) direct visitors to a landing page? Buying a new domain for the SINGLE purpose of 301 redirecting won’t boost the rankings (don't think it would get penalties either, unless it’s the only link building activity). Not planning to redirect to the homepage, but to the related sub page on our main site (specific landing page). Will this pass the appropriate anchor text and link authority to the right page on our website and help those pages to rank for their keywords? Only thinking of a few pages (no more than 3).
Technical SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0