Does Google look at Domain Registrar owner information when counting links into a site?

[tennisexpress]

Question: If the domain registrar owner info is the same on two websites, will Google/other search engines discredit any linking between the two sites when calculating page rank?

We have two company sites. One is our main ecommerce domain which we have been linking into from information domains in the past.

We recently cut ties with the company that hosted them for us and wish to host them ourselves to preserve the inbound traffic. We are worried, however, that the traffic will be discredited now that we own both domains.

Thanks for looking!

[donford]

Hello,

Google certainly looks at some register information. Its been long known factors like domain age, and length of ownership have some bearing. About 8 years ago Google became a domain register which now allows them a better level of access to the domain whois information. One may also deduce that with the Panda and Penguin updates seeing Google cracking down on link rings, spam sites, that Google is certainly using this information.

I laid out that information for you so I could say this. Even though Google may know you are the same owner of multiple domains, it is very unlikely that you'll receive any sort of extra penalty for operating 2 sites from the same server. However, remember that page rank and domain authority relates to linking C-Blocks, and being on the same server would reduce that link metric by 1 domain.

Hope that makes sense

[NakulGoyal]

I'd also recommend to look at your blog not just for SEO reasons as a link that helps towards SEO, but as your customer acquisition and brand awareness tool. The SEO Benefit is a freebie (maybe an essential freebie) that you get out of it. So if you think of this blog with this attitude, you'll end up building a great blog with tons of content, great readership and so on.

And to directly answer your question, honestly since it's just 1 domain name, I would not worry about it too much. As donford set, you'll technically get a little bit more value if this blog was hosted on a different Class C IP. Other then that, I wouldn't worry much about changing registrars etc. Not a big deal, however if it bothers you and you'd like to shift the domain to a different registrar, that's okay as well. Again, I would not stress much on this small issue.

I hope this helps.

[tennisexpress]

Right. We would not be hosting the site on the same server as our ecommerce website. We just want to confirm whether or not domain owner information has any relevance to SEO.

So you're saying that Google might or might not look at domain owner information, and it might play a small role in SEO rank, but to have a differing linking C-Block is much more important.

Thank you for your answer!

[tennisexpress]

You are correct. Ideally, we'd be building information sites where consumers could get real information regarding our brand and our products.

I like the idea. We'd be bringing traffic to our main e-commerce site regardless of what Google thinks due to the fact other sites would link to our information, our reader base would be interested in our information and therefore take a closer look at our products,and more.

Thank you for the suggestion and your answer.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Google has trended towards devaluing links between domains with "Administrative Relationships." It's a good bet that they can figure out you own both domains.

That said, it's only a devaluation. The links still count - just not as much. Think of it more like internal anchor text from your own site. Like Nakul said, since it's only one domain, you're not going to suffer a "link-wheel" scheme penalty or anything similar. It's natural and normal for sister sites to link to one another - even groups of sister sites. But the links likely won't help as much as external links form outside sites.