Does change of Whois registrant affect SERPs?

[asusplay]

Does changing the whois info on a domain for address and registrant cause change in the serps?

For example, let's say you have formed a company and now need your website to be owned by your company instead of by an individual. Does Google see that as if the site had been sold? Would it be re-sandboxed / filtered / have trust removed because it seems like new ownership?

[Quadrille]

No.

Provided the site was not dropped between owners.

While Google could, no doubt, look up the whois info on any site, there's no reason why they should, and no evidence that they do - even for known rogues and charlatans!

Listings are based on the pages that Google sees.

[londrum]

they definetly look at the whois info though, because your site is supposed to get a 'trust boost' if the doman is registered for a full 10 year term.

[JudgeJeffries]

Who says?
Evidence please.

[londrum]

there was a big thing about it a while ago, because it was mentioned in their new patent. so they definitely look at the data.

... doesn't necessarily mean they use it as part of their algo, of course... but why else would they look at it?

[jd01]

…actually, having it in their patent reserves them the right to use it and gives them the rights to the system involved, but does not in any way mean they are using it at this time.

The patent protects the system/idea, but does not necessarily indicate use of the protected system/idea.

Justin

[fishfinger]

If Google do intend to use this I seriously doubt it would apply to anything other than a newly registered domain. And even then it's such an easy thing to do - spammers have cash for 10 year registrations too!

I certainly see no evidence of it applying to existing sites. Recently a client who had overlooked their domain renewal nearly to the last minute renewed it for 12 months only instead of 24. Rankings solid.