Google's John Mueller said on Reddit "no" WhoisGuard, the NameCheap domain privacy setting, does not impact your SEO or rankings on Google. Google does not care if you use domain privacy settings or not when you register your domain name.
The question was:
Does Whois Guard affect SEO?I have been reading about spammers usually using whois guard, so Google tends to give more trust to websites not hiding their info on whois. So I tried not to use WIguard. I was spammed to hell in a matter of days, and what concerns me the most, is that my phone number and full name are on display. Rookie move - I know. So I activated the guard on namecheap now, and hopefully my details will vanish soon. What I'm wondering is: is there any truth about the whois guard/SEO correlation?
John responded in short "no."
I think many domain name registrars now default the whois privacy setting to on, to reduce email spam to their customers.
Simple enough.
Forum discussion at Reddit.
