Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Guess what happened? Google lowered my rankings lol
The machine probably thinks the owner has changed.
I call this Artificial Intelligence lol!
I highly doubt this was the case. Google doesn't use whois info to based its ranking.
Google did not become a registrar several years back for nothing. You can't register a domain with Google,so why would they become a registrar. Hmmmmmm......
If age of a domain is playing a role, they are using whois data to get the age. You can bet they use it for other things as well.
It's a site with only 5-7 URLs (offering a free widget) so I can rule out a lot of things. This site is 5 years old and never had any problems.
I reverted back to private and will see what happens.
[edited by: SEOPTI at 2:30 pm (utc) on Dec. 4, 2008]
You should get a whois service that automatically renews whois privacy. Enom, for example, has a setting to auto renew privacy 30 days before the domain expires.
On the topic of Google and whois, one site in my sector that is #2 in Google for a very competitive keyword uses whois privacy.
I suspect there are fewer potential problems wrt whois privacy related to Google than some of us might imagine. It's one of the best anti-spam services I ever got.
p/g
I think this is speculation more than specifically being tested. Some people have reported drops, such as SEOPTI. However, it is difficult to measure those drops and whether other factors did not come into play in terms of that drop that coincided with the automatic change.
Personally, some of my domains are protected and some are not. I did not notice a ranking change when switching to privacy, however, none have ever reverted.
Would be a great control test for the purposes of evaluation!
Surely if you are a registrar you can see who owns the domain irresepctive of Privacy.
Does anyone know for sure without speculating?
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.
That said, selling domains seems to me to fall into two categories.
1) Purchasing a SITE. Imagine buying a company in the real world. You would not expect to have to build a new client list, renegotiate contracts and the like. Same here. Ownership is transferred along with all assets, including ranking and backlink profile
2) Purchasing a DOMAIN Imagine buying a brand. You would expect to have to set up new contacts (supplier or client), contracts, and effectively start a business. While you get some boost from the brand, you certainly do not buy a successful business. Thus, if you redevelop (and particularly repurpose) a site, you can expect to lose the ranking and backlink JUICE the previous owners developed. You will keep the visitors, unless and until the link-owners decide (or notice) the link is not somewhere they want to associate with.
I don't think it's improbable that WHOIS is a factor, but IMO it must be a small one, or one that can only be sufficiently amplified by other, unrelated, factors.
An expiration on the other hand may justify a reset because the new owner may do something completely different with it. Inbound links may immediately become contextually unrelated.
SEOPTI - is your real name, address, etc. being used on other domains (or has it ever?) The anonymity registration service probably is on a whitelist, because blacklisting it would affect too many people. But, if you have done something naughty or questionable in the past under a domain registered with the real data then perhaps Google knew about it and decided to negatively flag this domain.
Also... if you're in a large building with multiple units then someone else may be using the same address as you to register domains. Perhaps they did something naughty.
Just a thought!
For instance, movign of your sites that has a link to one of your other sites to an IP address identifiable as connected to you could mean that the link doesn't count for as much as it used to when google thought it wasn't controlled by you.
Perhaps by revealing the real owner of your site you revealed a connection to some other site linking to your site?
Matt has said that Google "might" reset things
Just like with everything else about Google - it should be pure logic (I hope).
The logic is that rankings could change if the content has changed, like Tedster pointed out.
The logic also is that rankings could change if the new owner is an entity marked as a blackhat, spammer, or whatever.
On the other side, if business is as usual, and Google is not suspicious about “so and so” site, there should not be rank change after WHOIS has changed.
I think that although privacy option can be abused and misused by domain owners, it should also be respected.
All of my domains are registered through a company that does not allow company name to show as legal owner (although corp is the real owner). In addition, they do not allow PO box to be used.
Well, since I work from home, I don’t want the address where my kids resign to be out there in the “here you are” fashion. One could say "rent an office", but working from home address is such a reality today which cannot be ignored or blamed.
I hope that Google is using a common sense in this case.
I dont think its a good Idea to change rankings based on ownership and why, when its still the same quality.
[edited by: tedster at 4:42 am (utc) on Dec. 10, 2008]
But, this is pure guessing.
Seems silly to me unless there's a shift in content.
I thought Google ranked web pages not website owners.
Seems silly to me unless there's a shift in content.
Two points. One is about bad neighbourhoods. Who you associate yourself with on the net and who you are in the real world might say alot about the site. As noted, its not automatic, as with many things, I'm guessing there is a trust threshold for an individual (for clarity, I'm not suggesting this is the case with the OP)
Secondly, as previously noted, revealing yourself to be associated with a site that contributes PR and other ranking points is likely to mean a depression of those ranking points. More likely to be automatic IMHO.
Secondly, as previously noted, revealing yourself to be associated with a site that contributes PR and other ranking points is likely to mean a depression of those ranking points. More likely to be automatic IMHO.
In my own experience and based on competitors sites I would say that high trust will negate any potential devaluing of links that come from two sites with the same whois info.
However, as G's results are now so much in flux, can you exclude that this is not just one of those situations.
...so, what happened after you
reverted back
?
