
SEO: Don't Use Private Registration - mmaunder
http://markmaunder.com/2011/seo-dont-use-private-registration/
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patio11
Private registration is unlikely to be the reason why your site isn't ranking,
modulo fairly specific past events prior to the private registration. (e.g. "I
bought an expired domain for it's links, changed all the content, and then
switched on private registration. Now it doesn't rank for anything.")

I sympathize with "I made a change, something happened, this whole field feels
like voodoo, please tell me my change mattered." You're trying to black-box
guess emergent behavior of a very complicated algorithm. In some circumstances
that's the best alternative, but for this specific issue, the weight of past
experiences personally or known to me is not in your favor.

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mmaunder
I don't usually respond to trolls, but thought I'd respond to yours since the
quotes you've used are misleading:

I didn't buy an expired domain.

It doesn't feel like voodoo. I've been breaking web apps since you were 12.

Aren't we all black-box guessing Google? Aren't you?

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patio11
I apologize: I often use quotes to mark imagined dialogue. The first was
supposed to be read as counter-factual: if a hypothetical person had done
that, then yeah, it would make sense that having private domain registration
could possibly tip them over into a penalty. I'm working on the assumption
that you didn't do that, which means that I very much doubt it was the
causational element in your case.

~~~
mmaunder
Patio you're obviously a good guy and my sincere apologies for taking your
comments the wrong way. It was immediately after I had pre-breakfast coffee
which usually puts me on edge and makes me type before I think. Sorry mate.

~~~
patio11
No problem. We all have times like that.

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scottkrager
It's stuff like this that gives SEO such a bad rap.

No data to back up the claim. Not even a visual.

I ate a burrito for lunch today and traffic is through the roof! Must be the
burrito!

Sigh.

~~~
eli
Agreed.

I'm currently working on a small project to replace Google Custom Search with
a proper Apache Solr set up. Unfortunately the project manager heard at an SEO
conference that Google punishes you for using competing in-site search
products.

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RealGeek
I have experimented extensively with various domain registrations parameters
in correlation to SERPs. In my opinion, private registration does not have any
effect. The only domain parameter that seems to have effect is the length of
domain registration. Your domain is likely to have more trust value if the
domain is registered for 5 or more years.

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nekitamo
It's bullshit. I have dozens of websites ranking #1 for various keywords, and
they are all whoisguard protected.

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gohat
I've been doing SEO for 4 years (with some success) and this may be the first
time I heard that private registration is bad for search results.

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larrys
Exactly _how much_ it matters I can't say.

But I can say that it does matter.

Why?

Because for one thing a whois record with valid info is cached in various
places and creates unique info which is repackaged on other websites that get
slurped.

Next, we run a whois server for our registrar and it does get hit by google
bot every single day.

Along the same lines the registrar you use for your domain also matters.

None of this means that you can't rank well with private registration.

But unless you've got a specific reason to have privacy on your records there
is no question that it is an advantage (for seo and other reasons) to have
your info public (not to mention if it's private you stand a greater chance of
losing your domain name..)

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vaksel
it's bullshit, there are plenty of private registration websites ranking #1
for plenty of competitive keywords

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ksolanki
I find it amusing that Google, that started out (and still is) as a search
engine, now has so much power as to _influence_ the content in the web via the
almost-necessary SEO gimmicks.

May be, just may be, it's time to go to user-generated user-moderated
_directory_ of web links. Yes? or No?

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programminggeek
Google uses phrases like "hundreds of signals" to make people start to worry
about meaningless crap like private registration or .com vs. .org vs. .net and
so on.

