29
Nov 06

Competitive Webmastering & Domain Jujitsu: 7 Tips to Keep Your Network Hidden

by Andy Hagans Research with 22 Comments

Well I hate to make two posts sucking up to the same guy in one day… but I have long admired Graywolf for continuously bringing up issues about Google’s massive amounts of data, and their (sometimes) mismanaging of it. My personal opinion is that Google doesn’t do enough to protect their data on users — they don’t anonymize it, and they keep it virtually forever; this is just begging for abuse

But today I want to touch a bit on the data they have on us webmasters. If you’re an affiliate or have been in the SEO game for a while, chances are good that you have a dozen or more sites. If you do, please know that Google is trying to build an SEO rap sheet on you.

Graywolf posts a sort of open letter to Matt Cutts in this post:

…ask the question thatâs on everybodyâs mind regarding the site review session,
can Google see behind a private registration, and what are some
general-ish guidelines about owning multiple domains people should keep
in mind.

That’s been weighing on my mind too, a bit. I fall into the "not-entirely-tinfoil-hat-but-not-entirely-naive-either" camp, so I’ve taken some precautions, but probably need to be a bit more cautious than I am.

Why is this an issue? The AU Interactive blog has a short recap:

At Pubcon
last week during one of the sessions, Matt Cutts was reviewing an
attendeeâs website and using his laptop (which was tunneled into
Googleâs brain I assume), looked up all the domains this person owned
and called him out on it, suggesting that a number of other websites he owned looked spammy.

Google has proven that they don’t mind collateral damage if overall relevancy is improved. In this case, that means that if you have a lot of spammy sites, that’s going to help them predict whether or not a new site you launch is also spammy. Let’s skip past the whole "is this fair?" discussion and talk about how to hide your network from Big Brother.

6 Tips to Keep Your Large Network of Sites Where You Want Them — Behind Smoke and Mirrors, and Unassociated

Use private registration. This is a best practice for competitive webmastering anyway.
Register at multiple registrars. This is one of those arbitrary things — anything you can arbitrarily differ, differ.
Andy H. vs. A. Hagans vs. Andy Hagans Link Building LLC. Since Google is a registrar now, they can see right through private registrations (I think). If you have multiple LLCs or partners you can put them in different companies’ or partners’ names, as well. Note that I’m not suggesting you use fake names / addresses in WHOIS — you can lose your domain this way due to ICANN rules.
Use different hosts. Another one of those arbitrary things — anything you can arbitrarily differ, differ. And again a best practice for competitive webmastering anyway.
Don’t use the same link profile twice. Yet again a normal best practice. While you’re at it, avoid design, coding, or outbound link footprints.
if you’re REALLY paranoid, you may also want to only visit your own sites when: a) logged out of Google, and b) on a proxy.

Most of these tips overlap with "how to hide your site portfolio from other SEOs", too. No-brainers.

*hat tip to John Andrews for coming up with the term "competitive webmastering" — it’s a better phrase than "strategic SEO cum business" and I think it’s going to stick.

*update, tip #7: how did I forget this one? Don’t claim all of your sites with Google Sitemaps in a single Google account.

22 comments - add your's now

Stefan Juhl (11/29/06 at 1:42 pm)

To that list you should add: “don’t use adsense” and any other service provided by the search engines.

The best way for them to profile webmasters would be by following the flow of money. Who ends up with benefits because of a given website? If it’s the same for multiple websites is likely the same owner…

Christoph C. Cemper (11/29/06 at 2:28 pm)

Andy, really cool post…

the exact same thing came to my mind when Matt freaked that guy out with that “Cheap-Dash-Cheap-Dash-Crap-Stuff-Domain” saying thing…

Google seeing the real reg data is something I’m REALLY sure of… after all they are registrar.

Stefan’s comment on creating a common trace with adsense can be extended like this

- no common adsense
- no common google sitemap
- no common google analytics

HECK, not even the same tools like sitemaps from the same iPs … how do you think they “track down” illegal clicks by the owners ???

For adsense, it’s just one line of googlejuice

if signup_ip = click_ip then kick-user and publicly accuse him to be a criminal

I assume other tools got similar “intelligence”

best regards
Christoph

PS: btw was great meeting you & Patrick again in Vegas

graywolf (11/29/06 at 2:34 pm)

Be “creative” with how you scramble your name. Direct marketers have algo’s they use to match up names so they only send 1 item per household.

As an example strip out all the vowels and spaces and look at the remaining letters, if x% are the same it’s a match.

Not saying that’s what Google is doing, but they do have a lot of clever folks on the payroll there.

Christoph C. Cemper (11/29/06 at 5:46 pm)

@Graywolf : hey, if they can’t do a simple datacleaning job, they would buy it from the companies that do direct marketing…

so I agree fully with you

Everett (12/01/06 at 3:43 pm)

“Use private registration” I have thought about getting the “free privacy guard” options from the various hosting companies I register and host with, but then I though perhaps a domain with hidden Whois data would be trusted less by a search engine, and therefore find it more difficult to rank, all other things being equal. Thoughts on this?

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Tasen Software (12/04/06 at 2:47 pm)

I have read several recommendations lately about private registration. If I did not have to pay extra for it, I would use private registration every time. Unfortunately everything worthwhile costs a buck. Story of my life. =)

Everett (12/05/06 at 6:03 pm)

Tasen, Ipower web offers free privacy guard with registration and hosting packages. If you don’t mind being hosted over there.

Yankee Expat (12/25/06 at 5:42 pm)

I read number 7 and did the Homer Simpson – DOH!

#10

Michele (12/28/06 at 5:39 pm)

Private registration can lead to your mail being blocked by a lot of people, so I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that method.

#11

Emory Rowland (01/05/07 at 10:19 pm)

If Google can see the private registration info, then it’s not private and a lot of people are being ripped off because they are paying for a service they are not receiving. It also means that domain registrars are falsely advertising their service.

#12

R.Dhamotharan (01/24/07 at 12:42 pm)

Fine site

http://www.dhaarvi.blogspot.com/

#13

Rosie (02/17/07 at 6:10 pm)

I thank you for your comment.

#14

Mike Carter SEO Services (05/22/07 at 10:45 am)

I agree with Emory Rowland, but it does happen.

I do like the term competetive webmastering.

#15

Julie (06/25/07 at 7:14 am)

Generally I saw, private registrations are not bad enough. It completely depends on the company, if itâs popular and people have trust in it then there is no harm in going for their services.

#16