tedster - 9:16 pm on Dec 4, 2008 (gmt 0)

I have a client who changed the legal ownership of the domain (and business) twice within the past year. No changes in the SERPs followed on either time.

Other clients in the past have purchased other online businesses, changed the domain's Whois to reflect that, and also seen no ranking changes. Based on that, I'm thinking this is not an open-and-shut case of Whois changes influencing ranking.

Google has SAID they "might" reset things when a domain changes ownership, but I have yet to see it happen. It's certainly not a done deal, especially if there are no content changes following the Whois change.