Will changing domain registration details affect ranking?
-
Hi all,
I've got a .co.uk site that I want to update the domain registrant account details for. The change will involve registering the domain to a limited company name rather than an individual and possibly changing the registered address.
Does anyone know whether this could affect google rankings? I've heard of stories of sites losing their PR because the registrant details have changed and I don't really want that to happen!
Thanks in advance for any help
-
In the long run, changing the registration from a "person" to a "company" will give you added credibility. Especially if your trying to utilize the search engines places/local listings. They will send you a postcard to your company address. Once you validate the postcard you'll be considered a real player.
Keep in mind, that all goes out the door if you have a brandable personal name like Eddie Van Halen.
-
Thanks Ryan. You're pretty on the ball with answering questions
-
Short answer, No.
I have heard many stories but never one where someone claimed to lose their PR due to changing the domain registration details.
Domain registration information is accessed by Google. They can use any information located there as a signal. I am not aware of any confirmation from Google of any such data being used. If Google believed your domain changed owners, they may remove your historical PR but that would be if your site's content changed at the same time. For example if you bought AcmeHealth.com and before it was a health food store and now you use the site to sell health insurance, then Google would see the registration was sold and the content changed and make an adjustment.
This video from Matt Cutts is not directly related but you may find it helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnfM_szmDh0Q&A Forum
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
-
Will using CDN Affect SEO?
I'm got a website with a slider and each of the 6 slides has a 5-second video background. The website is B2B and the user profile for the website is employees at Fortune 1000 companies in the United States using desktop computers to browse. The videos are highly optimized and we did testing using various browsers and bandwidth connections to determine the videos loaded fast enough on down to a 15mbit/s connection (which is pretty low by today's average U.S. business bandwidths.) We tried hosting the videos on Vimeo and YouTube but it caused issues in the timing of the slide show display. (I've not seen any other website do what we do the way we do it. Most sites have a single video background with a single text overlay on top.) The downside to this is that loading all those videos produces a lot of bandwidth usage for our server. The website is serving a niche service industry though so we're not exceeding our current limits. I'm wondering though might there be some benefit to hosting just the video files on a CDN? Obviously that would mean lest bandwidth usage for our server, and possibly quicker load times where the CDN server is closer to the user than our server. But are there benefits or downsides from an SEO perspective noting that I'm proposing only putting the videos on the CDN, not the entire web page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Consult19010 -
Domain transfer
Hi Everyone! I work for a company that had a new website built through a digital agency and that website went live 2 months ago. I have only been with the company for 2 months and find myself under the gun, because they are not coming up in organic search results that they used to. The old domain was 301'ed to point to the new domain. There were also 1 to 1 redirects set up to transfer the old page authority to the new, equivalent pages. In everyone's experience, how long does it take for a domain to start populating for search terms that it used to? I know there are mixed reviews on 301 transfers and how much of the old domain authority is preserved when you take this route. What is your experience? Just looking for some answers. Thanks in advance! John
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdvisGroup0 -
Move domain to new domain, for how much time should I keep forwarding?
I'm not sure but my website looks like is not getting it's juice as supposed to be. As we already know, google preferred https sites and this is what happened to mine, it was been crawling as https but when the time came to move my domain to new domain, I used 301 or domain forwarding service, unfortunately they didn't have a way to forward from https to new https, they only had regular http to https, when users clicked to my old domain from google search my site was returned to "site does not exist", I used hreflang at least that google would detect my new domain been forwarding and yes it worked but now I'm wondering, for how much time should I keep the forwarding the old domain to the new one, my site looks like is not going up, I have changed all the external links, any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fulanito1 -
Google Update? Anyone seeing a drastic change in rankings?
Hey everyone, Has anyone seen a drastic change in clients Google Rankings, we have one which has dropped from 9.5% visibility to 5.4% in one month.. It's extremely worrying as I have never seen a drop like this before since I've managed the account, in fact rankings have increased month on month since we took over the account. I've also looked at google, no penalty showing, I've started removing spammy sites who link to us and also added no follow to some of the links on the site which linked out to try and keep some link juice in the site. Anything else I can try / do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Unbranded_Lee2 -
Can I undo a 301 redirect? Will it penalize my ranking?
I'm in charge of building a website for a company that made a mess. They own domain xxx.it (xxx is not the real domain, just a placeholder). Some years ago they 301 redirected xxx.it to xxx.com (they just changed TLDs). Last year they 301 redirected xxx.com to yyy.com (so, they actually changed domains). Now, after 13 months, the company failed and the new leadership wants me to undo everything and 301 redirect from yyy.com to xxx.it. So: 301 redirect is permanent. So, conceptually it's wrong to undo it. What happens if I undo it? Will my ranking be penalized, even if a significant amount of time has passed (13 months)? Will crawlers detect a loop (even if i remove any 301 redirect from xxx.it and theorically break the loop)? Here is the potential loop: xxx.it -> xxx.com -> yyy.com -> xxx.it -> etc... All of the articles I found on the web are quite old and not clear about this topic, that's why I'm asking this question.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | naska19900 -
Do links to a domain that re-directs to my domain pass link equity?
Hi guys. We've recently taken control of a third-party site and we're going to set up a domain re-direct so any traffic comes to our site. With any existing links that the third-party site has, will these pass link equity to our main site through the redirect? Thanks, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao0 -
Dropped ranking - new domain same IP????
We dropped ranking late last year for our site, so decided to start over with a new domain. However we didn't change IP address. Would this cause any issues???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jj34340 -
Running Google Ads on the website will impact the Rankings?
Hi, Will Google AdSense those are running above the fold of the website, impact the keywords rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RuchiPardal0