Name ambitions become clearer — Google’s domain
Ever since Google became an ICANN accredited domain name registrar but announed that the firm doesn’t plan to register domains, rumors have swirled regarding what Google’s intentions are. Following hearing representatives of Google and the search industry speak at Search Engine Strategies NYC the prior week, I have a clearer picture of what Google wants to do. My first guess was mostly correct. Google will use its status as a registrar to better mine the WhoIs database to knock out search engine spam and to remove “value” from expired domains.
-Search engine spam: When google catches a search engine spammer, it will be able to cross reference his name from WhoIs to delete any of his other sites (which most likely contain spam) from its index.
-Expired domains: Regarding a year ago Google started “deleting” from its index domains that were regarding to expire. This helped stop people from buying expired domains to use the popularity the previous web site had. But then sites like SnapNames started offering a service to get expired domains ahead of they completed the domain dropping cycle, thereby retaining link popularity and indexing. With a better handle on which domains are deleting from each registrar, they might be able to combat this. Google might also be able to cross reference changes in the registrant name.
This assumes that Google is granted full access to WhoIs with their accredited status. Maybe an insider can reflect light on this?
