Do you use whois privacy protection for your gaming websites?

[Sherlock]

I was bullied by state, even my hosting provider was bullied. I was bullied by police, that was acting directed by huge gambling company. I had my property seized. And you know why? Because I was an idiot who did not use who is privacy, who used wrong hosting and who was naive.

Maybe this does not happen in every state. Maybe. Now. But look around you. What is happening with the world. Look about the "bad actor" in the US for example. Issues like that are in every state. Every state has problems how to collect taxes. Every state will going towards stricter regulation and licences. And every licensed company will try to maximalize returns and will lobby by the state where they pay taxes. And such joint venture of the states and the big companies will be a mess across the economy.

Not your problem? Are you UK based affiliate promoting UK licensed business only and not planning more?

What about the time when criminals will start target people on traffic estimating tools? It already happened. Are you small affiliate now? Wait for the time when you grow to #1 and you will sweat about the trace you left when you had 3 registrations per month.

There are so many reasons why to hide your own privacy, of course not only with who is protection. I do not care personally that much about who is protection, it can be achieved by other tools and if one uses only whois protection, the site is quite easily traceable as well.

[Mario The Gambler]

Yes all my domains are protected. One of the best resources for identity theft is the WHOIS.


I do not want to see either a fool disembark at home because he lost some money and because he thinks I'm guilty.

[jameswoodeck]

everybody should use private whois.

[Triple7]

I remain with my conclusion that you won't win anything with having your details public.

[slotplayer]

I opted for it because I assumed at the time I'd get burried with a bunch of spam.
Generally when I take the cheap way out I burn myself.

[rtgbonus]

Yes, We use whois privacy protection on most of our sites

[Sherlock]

I remain with my conclusion that you won't win anything with having your details public.

Actually I think that whois privacy/same owner by many domains is a negative seo factor, maybe with connection with other data.

[xecutable]

Wait for the time when you grow to #1

You said this like it's inevitable . Luckily for many, that'd never happen.

[Sherlock]

Yeah, luckily. But one has to hedge against success as well. I am serious.

[Mario The Gambler]

Actually I think that whois privacy/same owner by many domains is a negative seo factor, maybe with connection with other data.

yes but it's a weak factor

[Sherlock]

I have not read any study about it. Did you? I am curious about it.

For me the SEO factors are not just weak or strong, I imagine the algo as something that takes the factors together. So many weak factors are maybe worth of nothing, but compared with other factors, they can trigger an avalanche.

Example: there is no secret that google tolerates certain amount of duplicated content. For webmasters who have many sites it might be a problem, because they copy themselves. Not just texts but the layout of page, pictures etc. It is hard to make completely different site and when google swallows it why not. If hosted at different locations with different whois, it might pass the G-shittest.

But if there is the same whois it can be the last drop. This is why I decided for different projects to use different proxy-entities as owners, alternatively different whois services/registrars. It might be a nonsense, but google for sure does not give points for each signal with some constant value. He changes the value of certain signal based on non/presence of other signals somehow. The algo is not that stupid I believe.

[Doolally]

I don't use any privacy protection and never have. I can see the pros and cons of both but I've never had any major issues with it apart from the increased spam you tend to get.

[DanHorvat]

I have not read any study about it. Did you? I am curious about it.

Using/not using WHOIS privacy is one of ~200 ranking signals Google uses. That's a fact.

I don't have any data on how strong of a ranking signal it is. Probably it's among the weaker ranking factors, but definitely not among the weakest.

[Moonlight Cat]

Anyway it will be better if all webmasters support whois privacy protect.
You may not use it, but please don't forget, that we all live in very different part of our planet. This world is very very different. So, please don't forget about your friends - webmasters from another countries.