What Parts Of Domain Registration Change Affect Rank
-
Could changing one's physical address for a domain or going from public to private registration have a negative affect on rank? Other factors? Thanks!
-
Understood. I'm not talking about buying and selling websites. Just owning it and making changes to the registration... private from public and street address. Thanks!
-
I think the context is hugely influential on how much registration change matters.
Let's say i buy Site X from M Johnson, and I don't change anything on the website. In this case I am sure that nothing will happen.
Let's say i buy Site X from M Johnson, and changes all the content on the website. In fact, I turn an old NGO website into a pharmaceutical website selling all sorts of pills. In this case, I am sure the registration data matters as it helps Google understand something shady is going on.
-
So nobody seems to think going from public to private or changing an address matters?
Of the two, I can see how one could reason that going from public to private is kind of a trust-decreasing step.
An address change seems to me to be normal business.
-
What about for link farms? If someone were to buy up a couple hundred websites and then use them to promote a select few websites you don't think that whois data is looked at?
-
Yeah it's to try to stop people buying and selling domains based on their PR. It doesn't seem to happen all of the time but an ownership change can (apparently) mean the trust that the domain got for its age gets reset, or at least reduced.
You can't have private unless you're an individual and not a company can you?
-
Makes sense, though I didn't know he said that. When did he say this?
-
Matt Cutts has indicated that they use whois info to try to know when sites have been sold and 301'd for link juice. Other than that, I would not expect your whois data to affect your ranking.
-
No I don't think so. Making your domain private just keeps your data out of sites like WHOIS. I'll double check that and let you know if I'm wrong.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
GSC: Change of Domain Not Processed, Despite Saying "Approved"?
Hi folks, I've just completed a straightforward olddomain -> newdomain migration. All the redirects were done on 7th Feb. I submitted the change of domain request on 7th Feb. All seemed fine - as can be seen in the attached. It's now 19th March and our pals at GSC are still saying that the domain migration is ongoing. I've never had this take so long before; 2-3 days tops. Their results are tanking as I can't geo target and more features in GSC are out of action as it's 'locked' due to this migration (I just get a screen as per the attached). Thoughts? Shall I risk withdrawing the request and starting anew? The old "turn it off and on again"? Thanks! hJXKC
Technical SEO | | tonyatfat0 -
Not ranking - Scarped content
Hi, I have a problem with a website, that never compe up with before. The website is: https://www.enallaktikidrasi.com It has a bunch of excellent articles, good enough on-page SEO and a medium backlink profile. However, it is ranking just for very very few keywords. The major problem is that there are original articles that searched by their title won't appear in top100 results but they will appear in other websites that scapre them (even if they give a backlink to our original article!) Also, the website has good rankings in Bing and Yahoo but not in Google. There are keywords ranking in #1 in Bing but nowhere in top10 pages in Google.... I am guessing for 3 issues: 1. Majestic shows a very low trust score (just 13). However, the website has not got any kind of penalty in the last 3 years. 2. There are many scarpers. The odd is that scarpers with no real value outrank our content. (Scarpers with almost zero backlink profile) 3. We ran Sucuri on website as there were a large bots attack. Is there a correlation between it bots attack and Google results? (but why not in Bing and Yahoo too?) It seems like Google underestimates the website when indexing websites for some reason. Moreover, some of the articles are really the best around but the keywords they are targeted are not either within the 30 first pages... Any help?? Thanks..
Technical SEO | | alex33andros0 -
Help: domain name change and Google News
Hi. I work for a regional news source, and our (separate) Spanish-language news publication recently changed its domain name. The publication lost its Google News inclusion. Most of their traffic came from Google News, so traffic tanked. They're trying to get back in. They reapplied but didn't get approved. They're now in the 30-day waiting period to reapply again. The website is run by a third-party company, which handled the domain name change in April (2015). That company has been running their site for a couple of years. Our in-house devs' hands are tied on helping, because we (at the mother company) don't manage their site. This third party has not been responsive. The Spanish pub folks have reached out to me to help them prepare for Round 2 of reapplication. I'm the mothership in-house SEO, but I've never experienced this situation before. Because everything seems to be in order besides the ham-handed changes, my best advice to them so far is: You'll have to wait until Google gets to know you again, unfortunately. Does that sound right? Any pointers out there for bringing their best possible A-game to the next round?
Technical SEO | | christyrobinson1 -
Parked Domains
I have a client who has a somewhat odd situation for their domains. They've been really inconsistent with how they've used them over the years, which makes for a slightly sticky situation. The client has two domains: compname.com and fullcompanyname.com. Right now, their website is just HTML (no CMS) and all of the URLs are relative, so both domains work. Since the new website will be in WordPress, they need to commit to one domain as the primary. Right now, it looks like compname.com is the one they've used the most in ads and such, so I'm going to recommend they go with that. However, the client has also used fullcompanyname.com a lot. They don't want to have to setup individual 301 redirects for everything. I think it's ridiculous, but you can lead a horse to water... Our developer has done some research and he may have found a solution that will satisfy the client. I just want to find out if there are any SEO implications. The possible plan is to us compname.com as the primary domain and to park fullcompanyname.com. That way, if someone visits fullcompanyname.com/products/my-favorite-product, it will still work without having to setup 301 redirects. Since the domain is parked, Google won't recognize it as duplicate content, correct? Just to be clear on the whole situation, I'm insisting that all of the website URLs need 301 redirects, regardless of the domain. The primary concern is with a lot of other stuff on the server that isn't related to the site (email campaign landing pages, image files, assets that are pulled in by the client's software, etc.). The client's concern is about redirecting all that other stuff (and there is a lot of it--thousands of files). The parked domain would seem to fix that, but I want to make sure that the client won't get Google slapped.
Technical SEO | | BopDesign0 -
Mobile site not ranking
Hello, Our main site ranks well for all the keyword terms, and yet, our mobile site is buried. It is a "m." configuration, and I am wondering if it is a question of not using the correct programming language to get it there? Or if the redirects to the main site should relate differently? I have tried to read up on the topic of mobile site SEO and cannot find (or understand) the answer? Could someone please help? Thanks so much in advance!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer0 -
Changing URL - Ranking Disappeared?
Hi All, I named a page URL /plectrums/ within the back end framework. But then decided to change it to /personalised-plectrums/ I resubmitted a GWT sitemap and 301 redirected plectrums -> personalised-plectrums My ranking for personalised plectrums has disappeared and has not come back does anyone know why this is? Or is there something I have missed? Lewis
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
What is the advantage of using sub domains instead of pages on the root domain?
Have a look at this example http://bannerad.designcrowd.com/ For each category of design, they have a landing page on the sub domain. Wouldn't it be better to have them as part of the same domain? What is the strategy behind using sub domains?
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
TLD domain rediversion
Hello, I have got a .co.uk version of my domain which is parked with godaddy and I want to divert it to the .com version which is the live site. At the moment the .co.uk version is showing a godaddy landing page. My setup is: Godaddy as domain registrar, domain.com host separate hosting company. I looked into godaddy panel and I guess I have two options. (which I have done as a quick fix), I have done the diversion within godaddy panel to the .com version. It simply asked for which domain I wanted to forward the .co.uk to, and I have entered the .com version. I can create the .co.uk domain within my shared hosting and repoint to the .com within the hosting company DNS settings, and have godaddy simply point to the hosting company nameservers instead. Are the two solutions above equivalent or is one better than others ? Esp. from an SEO point of view? If someone has technical expertise to explain, this would be great. I think it would also help other companies in the same situation. Thanks ! 🙂
Technical SEO | | dpaq20110