Transparency has became a huge topic with businesses over the past 3 years, and this also can reflect with your business online. Showcasing your company history and public details, such as inside an About page on your website, can help provide transparency and allows a reader to learn about your business and even connect with you. However, does it matter to your overall SEO ranking strategy if you keep your website registration WhoIs data private?
There are two sides to every story...
On one hand, Google has never issued a statement (to date) stating that they recommend you should hide your data. They have never been against privacy and have even taken steps to improve their own users privacy online.
If a website visitor researchers your business, private WhoIs data in your account could make people question the identity of who owns the website, but keep in mind that a typical searcher does not research this information.
Having a public WhoIs data may not make anyone doubt your identity.
Quotes from Matt Cutts referring to Private vs Public
“…When I checked the whois on them, they all had “whois privacy protection service” on them. That’s relatively unusual. …Having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so.”
Overall, it is a very controversial topic. Google has never released a specific statement that private or public WhoIs data may be better than the other. My suggestion is to always be honest with the Search Engines!
