This question has been bugging me for awhile. As you know, in the WHOIS database, it lists your name, address, and other information for the owner of the site. Now I am pretty sure that google looks at this information when ranking sites. You know, if you have a bunch of backlinks from your other sites, google will see that their all register to the same person and giving it less authority to rise in the SERPS (at least what I think).

Now my question is, do you think that google can see behind a domain registered in Private? I ahve heard through some people that they can't and then others have said that google can because they themselves are a Registar.

What does everyone think?

As per usual, it's just another ill thought out "theory" with lots of holes that prove it's complete drivel!

Google doesn't look at the information of site owners on WHOIS to determine whether or not to count a link if this should have been done, why do sites/blogs hosted on free subdomains still get highly ranked?

How do you know that google doesn't look at whois? It is just my thought and other SEOs, but wouldn't it make sense. If you think about, Google wants to list pages on top of the SERPs that are quality and trusted, so my take on it is that many other sites (non biased owned by different owners) linking to them help boost the authority for that search term. You hear about how google's algorithms are very complicated. I would think this would be just one easy/helpful thing to look at to find sites with credibility and that other people like. I would think this helps determine that the persons website isn't trying to manipulate the results and that other people/sites really do know its good content.

Also, I think that some subdomains get ranked high because it goes back to the backlink idea and that the free subdomain has been active throughout the internet through a few years- you know updating content through time or just being on the internet for some time.

Please let me know what you think. I would like to establish a good debate here, which helps dig into things deeper and get ideas from both sides. I do not know for sure myself, but makes sense to me.

Originally Posted by lexdino

Google doesn't look at the information of site owners on WHOIS to determine whether or not to count a link if this should have been done, why do sites/blogs hosted on free subdomains still get highly ranked?

IF the idea that SE used "Whois" information to determine whether a link to a site should be considered spammy or not was valid, then all blogstop/blogger sites would be affected, all wordpress "blogs" would be affected along with every other multisuser site.

It's just another "theory" with more holes in it than a sieve has.

I don't think I explained it to make it understandable in the last post.

The free subdomain accounts like blogger and wordpress.com could be ranked high for a keyword because it has a history and the fact that it most likely has alot of backlinks to that account.

Then to even further say this, how many of these free subdomain accounts do you see in the first page (or even first few pages) of the SERPS for keywords that actually get a fair amount of traffic?

Then maybe every once in awhile you might find one of these free subdomains on the top of high traffic SERPs. But then here you go again, its called competiton with other real sites. Those other real sites may not have any backlinks, history, or SEO design. I trully think its all about comparing sites, whether free or not, but the paid ones seem more serious.

Then, I am pretty sure Google looks for authority sites. I think they would classify an authority site having a site owner that isn't trying to make a quick buck from free traffic, but rather to giving authority to people that are dedicated to that area of business (keyword). People that are dedicated to that area love what they do which would = them having the desire to help people with that product or service.

Overall, what does a dedicated person of his business do, he/she is serious about the area. People that are serious about a business area and are usually serious enough to buy a website/ not a free site.

So you have never heard of "crash and burn spammers" who register domains to promote agressively (spamming) to the point of getting them banned, which they then abandon, they do this as a continuous process.

So don't imagine for one second the SEs are going to consider that buying a domain means the "owner" is serious and is not going to be spamming.
And there are people running on "free" sites that are VERY serious about their pages.

Okay, sometimes its hard to get my point across. The whole idea is that the SE's aren't going to look at one area but rather a collection of each little piece of the puzzle. I am not saying that just because someone buys a full domain that they're serious and isn't considered a spammer.

Your missing the whole concept Im trying to say here. Google isn't going to be focused on one little thing- its a collaboration of all of it. A puzzle is based on alot of little pieces, not one. Finding a good site with quality is about being the best for visitors. I am just saying a purchased domain gives the site a little push of authority above the rest of the free subdomains.

Overall, I am saying that a search engine is looking at the big picture with all the other ideas stated in my previous post- but not limited to just those.

Just my thoughts, please post any observations or objections to these.

I understand your point but such things are too simplistic and/or easily circumvented to be given much credence.

We often register hostnames for clients who do not want their address details etc public (we have a binding contract that states they will be released/transferred on request). Which means that quite a few of our clients sites are hosted on the same IPs AND are registered to one owner.

SEs prefer to use "signals" (their term) that are not so easily manipulated by the very people who are trying to "game" their results.

You have a decent point there, but your still veering away from the main concept one would be trying to accomplish here- to manipulate the SE's from disguise. I think we might be on different pages here.

The whole thing I am trying to find out from this post is- if one person has registered and hosted muliple domains like 40 (and this is all hosted on different IP addresses) but the person registered for those is openly shown as the owner of all of them in WhoIs.

Then you take all those registered domains and point them to your main money site that you want to rank for. I would think Google would see that all those backlinks for the main money site would be looked at to ensure its not biased from one person (which it is, as seen in WhoIs).

Your saying that you have multiple different clients registered through one person, but I seriously doubt that they don't link to eachother to try and manipulate the SERPs.

To go back to my discussion, I think you might have a good point that the SE's are looking for signals but I still think that their going to take in account the WhoIs information along with those spammy signals. When you say signals, I do agree with that too- like looking for linking patterns and such I would presume.

SEs have much better methods of detecting interlinked networks than the easily circumvented Whois information.

They can detect the footprint and the patterns regardless of how it is hidden.

If the intent is to hide a crosslinked network the "whois" info is the least of anyones concern

yeah, no doubt the SE's have better methods to find patterns, but I still think to a degree that they might look at both the patterns and WhoIs owner information. Maybe your right, you never know.

But maybe the advanced methods of finding patterns is good enough for the SEs in the first place where its not even worth it looking further in WhoIs. And if you don't have any signs of patterns that would point you out as trying to manipulate the results, then they probablly look at it as if you deserve it anyway.

To sum up the whole thing here based on what your saying and a conclusion if I were to believe they don't look at WhoIs: A person registering a few domains and each having its own separate SEO backlink work done without any patterns/connections, and then all of them backlinking to one site to boost its results- then it would be credible enough regardless of who owns those sites.

I think that is a good conclusion for this post, but you still never know unless there is some sophisticated testing with the ability to measure results. Now I am on tetartating back and forth as to what I believe. Great discussion

Well, I do not think google look for WHOIS information and consider that in terms of ranking or indexing but yes, if you have many links from the same IP it will consider as no more than a single backlink for your site.

I think google see the whois to find out the age of the site but to identify the sites onwer I dont think so as evan the same person can register two or more sites with diferent names and still be the same campany. I think they know that and they will follow more the IP then the name on the whois.The webmaster accounts or the google toolbar can tell google more about owner sites then the whois.
Any one has the rigth to have more then one site, but because Google the ideal is not spaming mutch between your sites.

xela1966, I see what your saying. yeah, google doesn't going to care if you have more than one site linking to your other sites, but my question was if they know all the sites linking to one of your major sites, do they give as much weight to those backlinks in comparison if it was someone different. So that would seem more credible and non-biased coming from multiple different people rather than the same person owning those sites supplying the backlinks.

Im my experience Google don't care about what the OP said!

Here is an example.

Try Googling "commission the World's best SE0" (Change the 0 to a o)

You will find about 8 of the top ten sites/links are all my sites.

They are all (other 1 that is registered to my partner) registered to me and are all on the same shared servers.

I would say if Google didn't like giving results to domains registered by the same person or for that matter on the same server then I wouldn't have 8 of the top ten results now would I?

The who is database isnt accurate anyway, so why would Google feel hte need to use such information that isnt accurate ? they wouldnt lol !

As you have discussed above google takes lots of factors into account, many people seem to look for conspiricy theorys within google becaues their sites are not doing well on there lol

When really if you want to be succesful on google you need to forget about trying to find lookpholes or conspiricys on how google works and just concentrate on your site !

Your just wasting energy otherwise lol

Woc

Im sorry, but please tell me your joking. I looked at your sites.

Lets get are facts straight. The whole point of SEO is to get traffic and then convert that traffic. Not just to get rank for random keywords that no one looks at. Of course google doesn't care to put someone's multiple sites at the top for those keywords, because no ones looking for it to begin with. Google isn't going to care about providing good service to something never looked at.

Originally Posted by MrFlicks

Im my experience Google don't care about what the OP said!

Here is an example.

Try Googling "commission the World's best SE0" (Change the 0 to a o)

You will find about 8 of the top ten sites/links are all my sites.

They are all (other 1 that is registered to my partner) registered to me and are all on the same shared servers.

I would say if Google didn't like giving results to domains registered by the same person or for that matter on the same server then I wouldn't have 8 of the top ten results now would I?

No Eric I am not joking.

What would be the point in for example ranking 2nd to Wikipedia for "SEO"?

I don't want all that traffic as most of it would be pretty much useless to me.

Why would I want to pay for all that bandwidth etc?

It is not quantity of traffic, in many cases, that counts but quality.

Wikepedia have it wrong imho when they say SEO = "improving quantity of traffic" as IMO SEO is about quality of traffic.

Well unless you are the likes of Google, eBay, MySpace, Facebook etc of course.

Now of course if you we're targeting "Harry Potter Half Blood Prince DVD" then yes to some extent it would be quantity you need. That goes without saying.

But when I have many search terms on Google Alert and I know the online figures are wrong as I can see from the alerts that search terms asscoiated to what I am targeting are indeed getting searched, even though in some cases in a neglible way and not even getting recorded in any online data I can find, I will have to disagree that "NOONE" is searching tthe erms asscociated with those I have targeted as all the alerts clogging up my inbox tell me a different story.

I was merely using an example - I could use another "Commission a cart00nist" (change 0'd for o's) - would you say nobody searched that? I was using one small example in the example above - but as has been a recurring theme you have decided to jump on that example and not see the bigger picture or take in to account I have Google alerts on many search terms - so I know the info online is untrue - Problem with some of Googles info is though it applies to just US searches and so doesn''t show searches elsewhere other than Google.com from the US

Originally Posted by EricRW

Im sorry, but please tell me your joking. I looked at your sites.

Lets get are facts straight. The whole point of SEO is to get traffic and then convert that traffic. Not just to get rank for random keywords that no one looks at. Of course google doesn't care to put someone's multiple sites at the top for those keywords, because no ones looking for it to begin with. Google isn't going to care about providing good service to something never looked at.

I personally would love to rank up by wikipedia for SEO. And if I did rank at the top for a highly searched keyword and my small business didn't provide the service, I could quite easily sell that domain for alot of money (or switch my whole business model around).

I don't exactly know what your trying to achieve with your site, I am just speaking in terms of the majority of people. The majority of people are trying to monetize their site. I understand some people's goals are to find and meet other people with the same small hobbies/ niche. It depends on what your trying to achieve, but I am talking about business for this thread.

Don't get me wrong, quality is a big part of it also. Thats why in the previous post I said,

The whole point of SEO is to get traffic and then convert that traffic.

Wouldn't you agree that having people convert would be quality traffic? At least for people like me, looking to monetize a site and not just meet other people interested in a small searched thing. We just have entirely different goals, thats all.