Google Domain Profiling
Written by Jeremy Luebke on November 22, 2006 – 12:55 pm -Last night, while listening to Net Income [mp3 link], Cshel brought up the site review panel at PubCon. Using his super secret agent laptop Matt Cutts called out a webmaster for having around 50 domains. From the sounds of it he was not interlinking them so no big deal right? Well maybe not. Why would Matt bring up the 50 different domains that where unconnected unless Google was using this information.
I’m sure the Google spam filters are much like email spam filters in that they use a point system to flag sites for penalty or manual review. The more points a site or page accumulates, the more likely it’s spam. I could see why Google would be wary of webmasters who have thousands of domains registered. Let’s just hope this is something that would only flag a manual review and not something that would cause an automated penalty.
So what are all my fellow tin-foil hat group members supposed to do?
- Private Registration - The public cannot access private registration data but can Google? On the same Net Income show, I think it was Cshel who mentioned a company she worked for that was a registrar had access to all private domain registration data from the main registrar database. If that’s true, there is no such thing as private registration when it comes to Google.
- Fake Registration Data - By using fake info when registering a domain you can avoid Google being able to connect your whois data. This does not mean that Google can’t still connect domains by use of Adsense, Google Analytics, or the servers you host on. Do you really have the time it takes to create a separate account for each and every domain for all of these services? While unlikely to happen, there is also the small chance of losing the domain for using fake info.
It’s up to you to decide how thick you want your tin-foil hat. I think this is definitely a sign to at least setup a new profile for any sites that are less than white. For example, I would have one profile for your white hat content sites and another for your MFA / black hat sites.
Update: Matt Cutts just posted the session details. A must read.
Update 2: It has been confirmed that Google cannot see past private domain registrations. That doesn’t mean they don’t have contracts with larger registrars to get the information for a fee.
Posted in Google, Search Engine Optimization |
November 22nd, 2006 at 2:00 pm
This does make you think yeah… Would Google also keep account on which SEO company optimizes which sites? And how are they using this data? All kinds of questions come up
November 22nd, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Looks like Matt Cutts just posted a break down of that session. It’s a must read for everyone, including the comments
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/2006-pubcon-in-vegas-thursday-site-reviews/
November 22nd, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Love the tin foil hat references. Google knows more than we know they know and we don’t know how they use what we don’t know they know. So who knows? Told a black hat friend and that sent him scrambling for more tin foil.
November 22nd, 2006 at 4:18 pm
LMFAO, sooo true David.
Anyone know the parent company for Reynolds Foil? I need to buy some stock.
December 24th, 2006 at 12:01 am
“Do you really have the time it takes to create a separate account for each and every domain for all of these services? While unlikely…”
Yes that is so true. And that’s why there’s only room for one at the top of any given SERP. You’ll have to trust me when I tell you that yes, sometimes it is worthwhile to spend that time (and more).
January 1st, 2007 at 2:12 am
This is something I’ve wondered about before, but I hoped that 50 sites would not raise any flags. I mean, who doesn’t have 50 domains?
I wonder what would be the effect of switching all domains to private, that is, would Google retain a record that the domains were once registered to the same person and consider them all affiliated?