Domain Names, Google and SEO

Nick Wilsdon has written a good article of interest to anyone involved in SEO, What does Google know about your domain names?

Google became a domain registrar in February 2005. But as Nick points out, it seems that Google didn’t become a registrar to trade in domain names, but to obtain the higher level access to domain information registrars have.

To this end he quotes Google spokeswoman Eileen Rodriguez, as saying “While we have no plans to register domains at this time, we believe this information can help us increase the quality of our search results.”

Nick speculates that Google has built or is building a tool to analyse domain names.

This tool could be very useful for Google. It would allow them to track the age of domain names and connect likely networks and portfolios. They would see when a domain name changed ownership and allow them to adjust the value of that domain in their engine.

They would especially be watching domains which are about to drop (expire) as this would be the likely time they would change hand. The system would be looking for status changes on WHOIS records, such as DETAGGED, REDEMPTION PERIOD, or PENDING DELETE. These would all indicate the registrant had failed to renew their domain. None [of this information] would be hidden by domain privacy contracts.

Read the full article on Jim Boykin’s blog for more details