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
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
-
Authority site drastic ranking drop after google https switch. Please Help!
Hi Mozers. Since Google switched to the https version, our company website (http://we.register.it) indexing switched to the https version (https://www.register.it). After that the ranking on Google dropped for almost every keyword. The site is very old and got a great authority and PR 7. It ranked for same keywords for very long time On each page from years there is the correct meta rel canonical. No spam, and WMT is ok. Could you please help? The internal links are all in http, and in https. If you are https are in https (they are all relatives) No changes have been made and the subdomain is in that way from 8 years: the main url has always been http://we.register.it Google started this indexing switch around the 15 October
Technical SEO | | luca_cash0 -
Which Pagination/Canonicalization Page Selection Approach Should be Used?
Currently working on a retail site that has a product category page with a series of pages related to each other i.e. page 1, page 2, page 3 and Show All page. These are being identified as duplicate content/title pages. I want to resolve this through the applications of pagination to the pages so that crawlers know that these pages belong to the same series. In addition to this I also want to apply canonicalization to point to one page as the one true result that rules them all. All pages have equal weight but I am leaning towards pointing at the ‘Show All’. Catch is that products consistently change meaning that I am sometimes dealing with 4 pages including Show All, and other times I am only dealing with one page (...so actually I should point to page 1 to play it safe). Silly question, but is there a hard and fast rule to setting up this lead page rule?
Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma0 -
Client sites on same IP / same c class IP range
Our own site and client sites (that we design) are either hosted on the same IP or within same C Class range of IPs Will there be an issue with Google if we include a link on the client site home page footer (as agreed with client) that links to a specific project page on our website for that client e.g they are not linking to our home page?
Technical SEO | | NeilD0 -
Does http://my.dudamobile.com/ Effect SEO
Hi, Hope everyone is enjoying the new year! I was wondering if converting your desk top website to a mobile one, example via http://my.dudamobile.com/, has any negative effects on SEO. Did it effect your site? Do you recommend doing it? Does it effect links? When people link to your desk top URL does that authority carry to the mobile, or would it be better if they link to the mobile (m.website.com) URL? Is http://my.dudamobile.com/ a good choice? Any feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated! Thanks Jimmy
Technical SEO | | jimmy02250 -
Has anyone used a company to help promote their site
Hi, i receive around ten emails a day claiming they can help you get your site in the top ten in google, now i know most are a load of rubbish but i am just wondering if anyone has used any of these companies for a new site or an old site. I am about to launch a new site after xmas and i am just wondering if any of these companies are worth looking at to help promote the new site instead of doing all the ground work myself. Would love to know your thoughts
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Site Categorization?
I know getting site categories to appear under the site are dependent on a lot of factors including site mapping. We have a site that does the categorization thing when you type in the sites url name however more people search for the name of the talent to find the site and the short url on the site is just his name, but shorter. However I was just wondering is their a way to optimize the site so that way we could get categorization to show up under the sites URL when they search for the talents full name I ask because the amount of people looking for the talents full name rather than the short name is a lot larger and I would like to see if we can take advantage of the real estate, but I honestly don't think there is a way, however I figured I would open it up to discussion to see if anyone has any ideas. Example: Site name is ABCD you type this into Google and you get ABCD.com about blog how to contact However the actual person whose site it is is ABCDEF and when you type that in you just get: ABCD.com without any of the categories appearing below the url. And that is what I'm asking about. Thanks as I can't seem to find a lot of information on this. However if there is another spot on the site talking about this please let me know I may just not be searching with the right terms.
Technical SEO | | KateGMaker0 -
If I redirect my WordPress blog to my main site, will it help my main site's SEO?
I have separate sites for my blog and main website. I'd like to link them in a way that enables the blog to boost my main site's SEO. Is there an easy way to do this? Thanks in advance for any advice...
Technical SEO | | matt-145670 -
Www/nonwww .co.uk/.com
When I started SEO - I didn't really know what I was doing (still don't!) Just wondering if anyone can help me with this small problem. I now understand that I basically have 4 URLs www.ablemagazine.com (Page Authority: 38/100) www.ablemagazine.co.uk (Page Authority: 47/100) ablemagazine.com (Page Authority: 3/100) ablemagazine.co.uk (Page Authority: 51/100) What should be configuration be to ensure I'm not loosing masses amounts of linkjuice? At the moment I have ablemagazine.co.uk set as my default domain in webmaster tools. www.ablemagazine.com www.ablemagazine.co.uk and ablemagazine.com all 301 redirect here (I think)
Technical SEO | | craven220