When you register a domain, the registrar has your identifying information.
However, you can choose to protect domain privacy if you do not want the names, addresses, phone numbers, etc. of the website contacts listed in Which is For the whole world to see.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons why people want to protect their privacy online.
But does WhoIs information – or the use of domain privacy – have any SEO implications?
Claim: WhoIs information is the ranking factor
Some of the questions that have arisen about the potential impact of domain privacy on SEO include:
- Does Hiding Your WHOIS Information Hurt Your Website’s Ranking?
- If we have a large number of sites in our network but use domain privacy, will Google count links that pass back and forth as legitimate?
- Is WhoIs a Google Trust Factor?
Evidence for WhoIs information as a ranking factor
When Google became a domain registrant in January 2005, SEO professionals were immediately skeptical about how registration information would be used in the ranking algorithm.
Barry Schwartz Note the next month That a Google spokesperson was set on fire with this comment to the New York Times:
“While there are no plans to register domains at this time, we believe this information can help us increase the quality of our search results.”
There hasn’t been a real consensus in the field for a few years, with SEO professionals and webmasters sharing conflicting experiences and advice in the forums.
In 2007, an industry blogger cited Matt Cutts as the basis for this recommendation:
Don’t hide behind domain privacy services if you don’t have a legitimate need to.
There is evidence that search engines can see right through this “wall” anyway, and that makes your site less trustworthy for regular (albeit technically savvy) visitors/customers.
Make sure the whois data matches the contact details on your site and in your privacy policy as well.
As Lauren Baker said at the time:
“By not wanting spam in your inbox, mailbox, phone box, or maybe even via your XBox, are you telling the search engines that your site can’t be trusted? I’m not sure that’s the case.”
The above blogger made this recommendation based on what Books by Matt Cutts From the site reviews he did at Pubcon in 2006:
Instead of any real content, most of the pages were parked PPC pages, and when I checked their Whois they all had “whois privacy protection service” on them.
This is relatively unusual.
Having lots of sites isn’t automatically bad, having PPC sites isn’t automatically bad, having whois privacy is not automatically bad, but once you get several of those factors together you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who has Just one site or so.”
Until then, there was no evidence that “hiding” behind domain privacy protections and choosing to keep your home address out of WhoIs’ database had any effect on ranking.
As Katz said, web spam can be seen as a red flag by the web spam team. But he was talking about their appearance in combination with other factors.
This was all a long time ago, so let’s find out more current information.
In 2016, an SEO professional posted a case study on a fairly reputable site claiming WhoIs was a trust factor, and he could prove it.
Specifically, he said, the address you use for your WhoIs contact information must be in the same general area as your site.
Turning on domain privacy protection or using a postal/physical address outside of the region your site intends to serve will kill your rankings. Or so the story goes.
We have to look at the broader context of Google’s case at this point.
Google had entered (or been through) several iterations of its detection and verification methods by then – Google+, authoring, IPv6, and so on.
This chalkboard Friday An episode with Cyrus Shepard from May 2014 gives us a look back at the various signals and clues Google was using up until then to determine who was in control of the sites.
Algorithms are much more complex than they were when we were having these conversations in 2005.
Given that an SEO professional simply presented a story with no supporting evidence, it’s hard to buy into this anecdotal experience that Google deemed WhoIs/domain privacy a confidence factor in its ranking algorithms in 2016.
The evidence against Whois information as a ranking factor
So let’s get more current.
In 2019, John Mueller responded to a question on Twitter about whether domain privacy settings affect SEO. It was clear:
No, feel free to use the privacy settings however you want them to be.
– 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 3, 2019
Today, Google only has a 2% Market share in domain registration.
They do not have access to enough data for this to have any reliability as a search signal.
In 2021, Mueller is back again Requested (This time on Reddit) Whether domain privacy settings affect SEO or ranking.
His response: “No.”
WhoIs information as a ranking factor: our judgment
There is no evidence that Google used domain privacy protection as a ranking factor.
Maybe they planned back in 2005 when they first became domain registrars.
Maybe they did for a short while.
But not for long, if that’s the case – and they certainly don’t use it today.
With that said, if you’re trying to anonymize site owners to create link networks or otherwise manipulate search rankings, you’re in spam web content territory.
This puts you at risk of a manual penalty if caught.
Google understands that online privacy is important and there are perfectly good reasons why people choose to keep their personal information outside of WhoIs.
WhoIs is not a ranking factor.
Featured image: Robin Biong / Search Engine Journal
