Does a 'Certified Domain' help SEO?

[Techboy]

I see that GoDaddy offer a 'Certified Domain' option. Does this help SEO at all?

[RyanKent]

GoDaddy's Certified Domain option is a $5 trust badge. A trust badge is valued based on two primary factors: recognition and standards. There are no standards for this badge, anyone can get it. While many people have heard of GoDaddy, I would suggest 99% of people have no awareness of what a "certified domain" is with respect to what GoDaddy offers and the badge has no recognition value.

In short, it's crap. http://www.godaddy.com/domains/certified-domains.aspx

You pay $5 and they verify your WhoIs information. That's it.

Most quality sites which involve ecommerce offer SSL certificates such as VeriSign or McAfee. These certificates are far more recognizable and offer much higher levels of tangible "certification". I wouldn't accept GoDaddy's certification symbol for free. That's just my opinion and others may share a different view.

I have used GoDaddy before but have since switched to NameCheap. GoDaddy's customer service is ok, but they are highly sales oriented with offers (i.e. sending spam e-mails and making their site difficult to use without being overwhelmed by offers) to customers asking them to buy a wide array of completely unnecessary products and services such as this domain certification.

[Techboy]

Thanks for the info - I won't bother with it then

I actually use https://www.freeparking.com but I need to create a CNAME record at the sub-sub-domain level (for Windows Azure verification) so I'm looking at other providers who do allow this. I have also read other people comment on GoDaddy's pushy sales tactics. I'll check out NameCheap.

[EGOL]

Ryan, do you think that a VeriSign, McAfee, Authorize or other "more accepted" "certification seals" might have any influence on rankings?

[RyanKent]

Yes, particularly McAfee and Verisign.

This is my belief and not necessarily commonly accepted (yet) amongst the SEO community. I base this belief on a few things:

• Panda. The questions asked of Panda reviewers were of the type "Would you trust this site with your credit card information". There are studies which clearly demonstrate improved CTR based on the addition of symbols, which tells me these symbols have a positive influence on these decisions. Additionally, the inclusion of these badges are an item which Google can easily track. It is also easy for Google to separate out authentic badges from the many sites who fake it (i.e. show the trust badge image but do not offer the functionality).

• Security. I sincerely believe sites with McAfee and VeriSign are more secure. I have a client who actually accepted direct credit card payments without SSL on his site. Doing such is a major violation of credit card acceptance, but somehow he managed to do it (prior to hiring me) and he got nailed. Someone hit his site with malware which stole credit card information. He fixed the problem but of course the malware issue impacts rankings.

If I can ever make the time I intend to write an article on this topic as I have done quite a bit of research. In my opinion VeriSign and McAfee's value is significantly higher then other SSL certificates due to their recognition amongst users. Trustwave, GoDaddy and other providers may offer a similar service, but it is very clear to me those badges do not offer the same recognition as do Verisign and McAfee. I just worked with a client who, on my recommendation, turned down a free eCommodo SSL and purchased a Verisign badge for $266. The bottom line is if that Verisign badge yields one extra customer per year, it pays for itself. This particular client sells a $60 product which is purchased monthly and has a high profit margin.

Also McAfee and Verisign (Norton) both have an extension with millions of users each. Users of their AV software will have sites with their trust badges highlighted with their "Seal in Search" feature. Clearly this function is designed to influence CTR and each company provides numbers to show support that conclusion. As far as ranking, I can't say whether Google uses this information as a ranking factor but I know they could and perhaps even should. If I was Google, I would address users with those browser extensions installed by boosting the rankings for sites with the specific seals.

In April of next year the Verisign Seal will change it's name to Norton. If Norton does not do any advertising, this may cause a significant drop in that seal's recognition and value. It's a big unknown at this point.