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Google became a domain registrar back in January 2005. Since then SEOs have been trying to determine to what extent, if any, does Google use this data when ranking sites in the search results. We have covered this extensively in the past with articles named:
- Google Admits to Improve Search Quality with Registrar Data
- Changing Domain Name Ownership Whois Information & Google Search Ranking Impact
- The "Google Certified Domain Change" Proposal
Bill Slawski posted a detailed analysis of this at SEW blog named Does Google Use Whois Information? and then followed it up with a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums. In those discussion, Bill shows how a new ICANN definition may disallow Google from using such data for purposes outside of the scope of providing "a point of contact when there are technical problems with a web site." Ranking Web sites based on registrar data is well outside of that scope.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.
Comments:
aaron wall
05/10/2006 03:43 pm
I pointed out that I had 3 sites ranking in the top 10 for seo book...all with the same whois. But the HotNacho guy said that they used his whois info to nuke all his sites.
Kieran Hawe
05/10/2006 07:13 pm
Google using whois information concerns me - we have tons of subsites hosted on various servers so that SE's dont see us as the same site, however our whois information all has the same registrant. Basically Google could render our server farm useless.