PRIVATE WHOIS – 1 BIG GOOGLE RANKING FACTOR?

When you choose a domain name and register a domain, the registrar has your identifying information.

But, you can choose domain privacy protection. If you do they will hide the names, addresses, phone numbers, etc. of website contacts information you entered that would otherwise be listed in WhoIs for all the world to see.

There are lots of very legitimate reasons people want to protect their privacy online.

But when you hide the WhoIs information – using domain privacy – are there any SEO implications?

Google became a domain registrar in January 2005, and SEO professionals became instantly suspicious about how registration information might be used in the ranking algorithm.

Barry Schwartz noted the following month that a Google spokesperson made this comment to the New York Times:

“While we have no plans to register domains at this time, we believe this information can help us increase the quality of our search results.”

In 2007, industry blogger cited Matt Cutts gave 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 it makes your site less trustworthy to normal (albeit tech savvy) visitors/customers. Make sure the whois data matches the contact details on your site and in your privacy policy, too.”

A blogger, Loren Baker said:

“By not wanting to be spammed in your inbox, mailbox, phone box or possibly even via your XBox, are you telling search engines that your site cannot be trusted? I’m not sure this is the case.”

“Rather than any real content, most of the pages were pay-per-click (PPC) parked pages, and when I checked the whois on them, they all had “whois privacy protection service” on them.”

“Having lots of sites isn’t automatically bad, and having PPC sites isn’t automatically bad, and having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so.”

In 2016, an SEO pro published a study on a reputable site claiming that WhoIs was a ‘trust factor’, and could prove it. He stated that the address you use in your WhoIs contact info must be in the same general region that your site serves. Activating domain privacy protection or using a mailing/physical address outside of the area your site serves would kill your rankings. Or so he claimed. True of false? Keep reading.

Then in 2019, John Mueller of Google responded to a tweet question as to whether domain privacy settings affect SEO. He was clear:

“No, feel free to use the privacy settings as you want them.”

Then again in 2021, John Mueller was again asked (this time on Reddit) whether domain privacy settings impact SEO or rankings.

His reply: “No.”