Does incomplete or private WHOIS information have negative effect on SEO?

[Silktide]

I wondered if having incomplete WHOIS information has a negative effect on rankings?

Also I know it's possible to keep WHOIS information private, so I wondered if google would think this suspicious and rank a site not as highly as it should?

Thanks!

[Devanur-Rafi]

Hi there,

Its still a highly debated question whether or not if search engines like Google use WHOIS info while ranking a website. Even if you make your WHOIS info private, Google being an accredited ICANN registrar, they can access your WHOIS info.

Now coming back to the question at hand, if search engines use WHOIS info while ranking.

There was an instance in my experience where a client's websites were penalized because they had multiple domains that targeted the same set of keywords /phrases and were ranking in the first page. While the client took all the care to keep those websites look different in all possible respects  like the design, look and feel, navigation, content and even the link profiles of these domains, separate webmaster tools accounts and none of them were interlinked or cross-linked etc., the one obvious thing that was not changed was  the WHOIS info behind these domains which was same. So this incidence in particular made me believe that the search engines like Google might not leave any stone unturned in an effort to put a check on the quality of their search results and also to minimize the chance of any one individual or company trying to grab multiple positions in the first page of their results pages.

That was my experience but I would suggest you to be honest and complete while filling the WHOIS info.

Best regards,

Devanur Rafi