Does Google Use IP & Whois Information?

Algo theory.

[figment88]

I was playing around at **** (site compares regular SERP with one that add negative garbage words), I noticed for that a lot of non "overly-optimized" sites are being booted from the top-100.

I saw lots of sites that were in top 10 with the neg garbage words booted that did not have phrase in title, or overly repeated on page, or in anchor text.

I looked to the external links and noticed that many were things like:
1) corporations with different sites for major brands that cross-link
2) links from different sites but same IP
3) multiple links from unrelated sites

Clearly just before Florida, Google took action against some of the more egregious sites selling page rank (they were not PR0 but purchased backlinks stopped showing up). I think part of Florida may be an extension of disqualifying some links from helping in the SERPs.

More circumstantial evidence that they are using DNS/Whois info for Adsense. Application information is compared to these records.

If Google wants to stick to their metaphor that links are votes for quality, it can't work if you let people buy votes or vote for themselves.