question regarding WHOIS and SEO on private blog networks

[mattlaclear]

Hi Warriors,

I am in the midst of setting up a 500 site blog network I'm going to use to post spun articles on for backlink purposes. I have close to 50 different C class IP addresses on my hosting account and I have the 500 domains ready to go.

But it just hit me that the WHOIS privacy might derail the whole efforts as Google will know all the sites are owned by myself despite the different ip addresses I'm running.

So my question is this:

How important is WHOIS privacy if you are creating a private network of blogs for backlinking purposes?

GD charges $8.99 per domain for the private WHOIS and I would like toa void paying that times 500 if at all possible.

Any help and insight you can give me on this will be greatly appreciated.

[HunterSnake]

Originally Posted by mattlaclear

But it just hit me that the WHOIS privacy might derail the whole efforts as Google will know all the sites are owned by myself despite the different ip addresses I'm running.

How important is WHOIS privacy if you are creating a private network of blogs for backlinking purposes?

This is very controversial. Some people believe that WHOIS Privacy (Private Registration) doesn't matter at all for SEO. Others feel that it does. Naturally, only Google knows.

Because of Google's "TrustRank" that isn't as frequently talked about as "PageRank", I'm a person who thinks it probably does matter. Most spammers, if not all, are going to use either Private Registration or bogus WHOIS data. With that logic, it would make sense that Google would trust a web site more that used legitimate WHOIS data. A real business, such as IBM, doesn't hide their details, for example, and only IBM sites share those details...

Nobody here is going to be able to tell you for certain. But, it makes sense to me that Google may rank a site higher that has real WHOIS data if legitimate WHOIS data is in fact one of the hundreds of ranking factors. There's no proof one way or the other, at least that I've found.

A PO Box is cheaper than Private Registration on all of those domain names...

Originally Posted by mattlaclear

GD charges $8.99 per domain for the private WHOIS and I would like toa void paying that times 500 if at all possible.

Hover includes FREE WHOIS Privacy on all domain names and tends to provide superior service to GoDaddy. With a coupon code, you'll only pay $13.50 per domain total, private registration included, so it would be cheaper just to transfer everything to Hover if you decide to go the private registration route. They have a bulk management tool that you can request activated on your account that works pretty good. You can experiment, too, with Hover. You can turn off private registration, see how things behave, turn it back on, whatever you want, and there are no extra fees.

That's just my personal bias, anyway! I'm a Tucows person. What can I say?

[sirkaliber]

I also heard the longer the domain registration the more trustrank the domain receives.

[mark@1to101]

I had this exact issue playing on my mind for a while as I'm also going down the private blog network route.

I decided that paying extra for the WHOIS privacy wasn't worthwhile as, as far as I know, it only hides your details from the general public.

As Google is also a domain registrar, I would think that they could access WHOIS information even if privacy was set-up.

Another thought, the WHOIS information is just text fields, right? Those registering domains aren't given a specific ID I don't think.

So, I'm not really sure how Google would differentiate between all of the people who registered domains under the name of, say, John Smith.

They could check to see which domains are registered to a certain address or phone number, but I'm not really sure they would bother to be honest.

[Sukhdeepak]

Thanks a lot for providing such a useful information.

[Chris Hunter]

So what did you decide to do, Matt?

[ameerulislam10]

Originally Posted by hath80

Nobody here is going to be able to tell you for certain. But, it makes sense to me that Google may rank a site higher that has real WHOIS data if legitimate WHOIS data is in fact one of the hundreds of ranking factors. There's no proof one way or the other, at least that I've found.

Did you just copied and pasted HunterSnake's post?

[Mike Grant]

Extremely important. It's also extremely important that you change nameservers, and use different data centers.

[mark@1to101]

Originally Posted by mgtarheels

It's also extremely important that you change nameservers, and use different data centers.

This I agree with, as that is numerical data. The WHOIS information is different though, being text fields.

I can say from experience (I've got a network of 75+ sites) that I've used mainly different IPs, nameservers and data centers, but left the WHOIS information open, and Google always indexes the content on those sites.

[mattlaclear]

I actually have a network of 2000 sites put together now. Putting together my own blog network was one of the smartest moves I made in the last ten years I dare say. We have generated over $75 k from it in just the last three months alone.

[Chris Hunter]

Originally Posted by mattlaclear

I actually have a network of 2000 sites put together now. Putting together my own blog network was one of the smartest moves I made in the last ten years I dare say. We have generated over $75 k from it in just the last three months alone.

Thanks for replying to the thread, Matt.

I was especially curious as to how you set it all up.

Working on my own now and I'd like to make as few mistakes as possible...

[mark@1to101]

Originally Posted by mattlaclear

I actually have a network of 2000 sites put together now.

Did you use WHOIS privacy for those?