Sphinn - How Does Google Track Your Domains?

58
Sphinn It!

Went Hot: January 3, 2008 - 12:32 pm
Posted By: jeffquipp 549 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com)
Category: SEO

A very interesting post by SlightlyShadySEO (XMCP), discussing techniques that Google is likely to use to detect sites owned by the same individual, and techniques they're definitely not using.

Very insightful!

6 Comments

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Comments

from IncrediBILL 549 days ago #

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Sigh.

Am I the only one that remembers Google became a registrar a couple of years ago?

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1758511,00.asp

Nothing like having complete access to every domain name registration to track people.

from sza 549 days ago #

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Sounds logical like many other imaginary methods attributed to Google. But is this really so easy and resource-efficient to do with hundreds of millions of domains? Is the potential benefit for Google worth it?

On a theoretical basis, most of us could devise a lot of correlations, coincidences and probabilities that could be cross-checked by a search engine.

However, not being search engineers we don't really know the investment (time, engineering, processing capacity) needed for such tracking and checking. So what seems to be a great idea in theory might be unfeasible in practice, or just not "profitable".

On the other hand, I do feel paranoid sometimes. After all, Google thrives on data. They might as well cross-reference absolutely every type of data they possess to see potentially useful signals.

In that case, practically any kind of behavior could become risky.

What if they realize that people who check into their AdSense account more than twice a day are 3.4% more likely to have MFA sites? Or webmasters who submit sitemaps are 6.8% more likely to buy links? Or people who log in to their Gmail account from more than 3 different IPs are 4.7% more likely to use invisible text on their sites?

Or any other crazy, unexpected coincidence?

Whatever you do online, if it is seen by Google, it might work out against you because you may unwittingly behave in a way that's going to make you suspect statistically.

And "statistically" is all they care about, as evident from their "guilty until proven innocent" stance.

from yeepage 549 days ago #

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solid article, i can see the logic in all 3 theories and the first two are simple obvious ones, but i guess many people do make these mistakes...

from SlightlyShadySEO 549 days ago #

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Sigh. Bill, I addressed that ;-)

@sza: The big G has been known to do some weird ass things in the world of banning...they have been known to make connections that are really hard to connect.

Remember, not too long ago, Google was almost overwhelmed by spam. It's well worth it to them to invest their resources.

from NickWilsdon 548 days ago #

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Yep Bill - I addressed that point with Barry in 2005 :)

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/001468.html

People interested in this subject though should take a look at the Registrant Search feature at DomainTools (http://sphinn.com/story.php?id=13755) That has gone a long way in connecting the dots between domain portfolios. It's also a proof of concept for the kind of system they might have in-house. One of the main advantages to becoming a registrar is better access to API's for data mining -as I wrote on Jim's blog back then:

http://www.jimboykin.com/what-does-google-know-about-your-domain-names-by-nick-wilsdon/

from IncrediBILL 548 days ago #

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Shady, too long a post... guess I glossed over it