Does privatizing a domain name lower its search rankings?

jesse_pinkman · Feb 5, 2014

Domain privacy via "Domains By Proxy" has been activated on several domains purchased via GoDaddy. Does shielding my registrant information in this manner negatively affect my search engine page rank? Some articles indicate yes. Others indicate no. I'd post links to the articles but this forum doesn't allow me to post links. What sayest thou?

yensidtlaw · Feb 5, 2014

Hey Jesse. Welcome to BHW.

In my experience, no. Not at all.

But some others are no doubt going to tell you that it will.

TintedEyes · Feb 5, 2014

I have had several sites in similar niches at times some with and without domain privacy enabled. There was no noticeable punishment for having the domain privacy turned on.

TrevorB · Feb 5, 2014

I think for Google to punish sites that want to have privacy, and not receive all the spam one can get by having your email and everything out there, would be plain stupid. But then again, we are talking about Google here.

jesse_pinkman · Feb 5, 2014

Thanks so much. This is good to know. Keeping the registrant information private is definitely preferable.

I'm working my way through an article that describes 200 different criteria that Google uses in its ranking algorithm. I wish I could post a link to show you. Let's try this: It's the tiny URL site with a forward slash and "lrjdcme"

Anyway, one of the things it says is that *if* registrant information is public, there's a reward for having a registrant email address that's in the same domain as the site's domain. I have to believe that the reward is minimal, however, and is outweighed by the benefits of privacy.

Panther28 · Feb 5, 2014

i recently moved a public to a private at its renewal, and watched the difference in ranking. It didn't budge a hair.

freller · Feb 5, 2014

I'd love to see ANY evidence one way or the other. All my domains went private over the space of a few months and I didn't see any differences other than the usual Google mucking about.

miluge · Feb 5, 2014

You mean hiding the WHOIS infos or just making the webiste private with only some users accessing it ?

In both case I don't think it would impact you.

jesse_pinkman · Feb 5, 2014

Miluge: I was just referring to keeping the WHOIS registrant info private -- not the content of the site itself.

Does privatizing a domain name lower its search rankings?

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