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
-
Can I Block https URLs using Host directive in robots.txt?
Hello Moz Community, Recently, I have found that Google bots has started crawling HTTPs urls of my website which is increasing the number of duplicate pages at our website. Instead of creating a separate robots.txt file for https version of my website, can I use Host directive in the robots.txt to suggest Google bots which is the original version of the website. Host: http://www.example.com I was wondering if this method will work and suggest Google bots that HTTPs URLs are the mirror of this website. Thanks for all of the great responses! Regards,
Technical SEO | | TJC.co.uk
Ramendra0 -
Need better solution for 301s with Jekyll/S3 Site
Hey Mozzers, So, this isn't the first time that I've come to the community with questions regarding my new site. Although running a site using static HTML-generated pages has been fantastic in the first few weeks as far as load times, it's been a nightmare in terms of a few other SEO-related concerns, namely redirects. In the Q&A post above, Mat Shepherd pointed out a solution for adding 301s to an Amazon Webservices site using their "Redirection Rules" field on the "Configure Bucket for Website Hosting" page. However, I discovered soon after that I was limited to only 50 redirects using this method. Obviously, all things considered, this will not be enough. At this point, I'm basically out of ideas. If anyone else out there has a website with a similar setup, (Jekyll platform hosted on Amazon S3,) that has overcome this problem with redirects, I'd really appreciate hearing from you. Thanks in advance, everyone
Technical SEO | | danny.wood0 -
Site Blacklisted
Good morning. Just done my WMT ritual morning check and one of my sites has been blacklisted for malware. It's a wordpress site - I've run various scans, e.g. http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/ and also installed wordfence and scanned with that and wordfence produced some offending files which I have now deleted. I've also installed website defender in the hope that it wont happen again. I'm pretty good with staying on top of updates and rarely let a few days pass without upgrading new version of wordpress or plugins etc. I've also checked my users to make sure no new admins or anything and also changes passwords. I've asked for a review from Google and just wondered how long these reviews take? Also, has anybody got any advice, is there anything else I should be doing? Thanks
Technical SEO | | littlesthobo0 -
Should I use canonical?
I'm working on a site that sells audio tracks, the site is a Wordpress build. I've got Yoast and XML Sitemaps running for SEO. The site has been developed (not by myself) to use a flash based audio player. Now this player offers the ability to share, sell products etc... The player has been placed on the homepage and the main music catalog page. The main catalog page has had a custom page type created for itself. This page has been created in such a way that if you visit the actual page from dashboard > Pages and add content then no content will appear on the page. Even the page header is pulled from the PHP. So really as far as I am aware no real content is being seen on the page by a search engine. Except the content on the side bars (it has 2 sidebars on either side of the page.) The homepage has an introductory paragraph and header which are editable via the normal method in Wordpress. A custom post type has been created specifically for music items. When a music item is uploaded it is added to the music item feed on the homepage and music catalog pages. It also creates a separate post for the item itself. These items at the moment also have 'no content' as they are only sidebars with a flash music player. I've started to add short paragraphs and headers to them so there is content on the music item posts. I cannot however, in the time frame/budget start entering deeply descriptive content about each item. (I considered adding the intro paragraph from the homepage and using a canonical tag to the homepage on every music item). So here is my question. What do I do with these music items? Do I use canonical and point them toward the music catalog or the homepage? If so which one? I want the homepage or music catalog page to rank well and I am concerned that search engines aren't going to see these most vital parts of the site. I don't think individual items ranking is helpful, so what do i do?!?! The home and catalog pages are the two main pages of the site. I am going to advise a new player, page type etc... be utilised but at the moment I need a solution quickly. Any help will be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | benyamin0 -
Searching in Google using the Site:www.example.com specification - is it in an order?
Hi Gurus, Just a quick searching question. If you do a Google search using the site: specification eg. site:www.example.com Is the list returned by Google in an order of something similar to 'Page Authority' or some other order eg. page first seen date etc. Because you are looking at your single site, is Google listing your pages back to you in it's perceived order of current 'popularity'? Thanks, Brad
Technical SEO | | BM70 -
Url canonicalization: www. to http://
Hey there. Sorry for the simple question but I recently redesigned a site and published with WordPress, in the process the domain structure changed from being www. to http:// . My question is does this change affect the value we get from links pointing to the old www. domain structure? The reason I ask is that the old site had a domain authority of 36 with OSE and a couple of hundred links but the new site address shows as having zero domain authority and zero links. Is there some best practise I should be following to retain link value?
Technical SEO | | Luia0 -
Build links to / or without ./ on root
Hi there for linkbuilding what is better, building with / or without / www.domain.com www.domain.com/ I have been told it depends what your webserver is doing, also i was told they are the same? what does Google see? I know i need to stay consistent, just wondering which practice is better? Any help as always much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Www. version of my site shows nothing in Open Site Explorer
When I first setup my site the domain was learnbonds.com. I moved hosts a couple of months ago and as part of the process I asked them to make the site show as www.learnbonds.com which they did. Now however when I goto www.learnbonds.com in open site explorer it says there is no data. When I enter learnbonds.com into open site explorer it gives me data but says that the site has been redirected to the www. version which shows no data. Also in google webmaster when I try to set the preferred domain as the www. version it gives me the following message: Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own http://www.learnbonds.com/. Please verify http://www.learnbonds.com/. I am concerned that this is hurting my SEO and would appreciate any advice you can give. Thanks Dave
Technical SEO | | fxtrader19790