Does Whois Information Matter To Rankings?

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:59:00 GMT

There is a fascinating thread happening now at Webmaster World regarding the public versus private availability of Whois information and the impact on search engine rankings.

The original poster had forgotten to renew his private Whois information and argued that his rankings dropped as a result. While it is difficult to say in no uncertain terms that the change did result in lower rankings, it is most certainly curious that Google is an official ICANN accredited registrar (but does not actually register any domains) which gives them access to Whois information in real time.

The result (if you believe the domain owner) has been a general devaluing of the inbound links. Other forum participants are not so sure. One poster said, "I think this is speculation more than specifically being tested. Some people have reported drops, such as SEOPTI. However, it is difficult to measure those drops and whether other factors did not come into play in terms of that drop that coincided with the automatic change."

And this poster was not alone. "I've not seen any impact of changing WHOIS information, from an edit or even via the adding or removal of 'privacy protection' from a domain name. I don't think it's improbable that WHOIS is a factor, but IMO it must be a small one, or one that can only be sufficiently amplified by other, unrelated, factors."

In the end, I think it is conceivable that Google would look for change in registrar data, when it correlates to a drastic change on the website. Best practice in this instance might be that if you buy a site from someone, you should wait a while before changing the content drastically if you change the registrar data right away (as you should).

Improvements to the Alexa Ranking System

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:32:00 GMT

Web information company Alexa, an Amazon company, announced that a new ranking system is available. Alexa has ranked websites since 1998 and that time has managed to endear itself to millions of website owners and operators and simultaneously raise the ire of the same number. Rankings were based on analysis of Internet usage by people using the Alexa toolbar which any savvy online marketer can tell you, could easily be manipulated in the past. Today, website owners are seeing their rankings shift and the fun will continue for the next couple weeks. While the announcement was pretty vague on what has actually changed might again make Alexa a competitor in the face of competition from solutions like Compete.com, Quantcast.com and other Web ranking services.

An improved methodology will normalize traffic from a global panel and provide more accurate rankings for all countries, and while not dumping the toolbar data outright, Alexa rankings will now be based on more sources of data to give better indication of website popularity. Pretty big news in the website ranking business.

Does this system-wide improvement make Alexa a more viable solution?
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Does Whois Information Matter To Rankings?

Improvements to the Alexa Ranking System