The question of how Google may use whois data in ranking or spam detection has been discussed over the years time and time again. There are many ways Google could use the data, from checking who owns which web sites, checking site age, checking transfer of ownership of domains, and possibly for some sort of keyword relevancy factor.

The keyword relevancy factor is now being discussed at a WebmasterWorld. One person said that when he Google’d his name, a site that he owned but had no mention of his name on and no links pointing to the site with his name as the anchor text, came up. Thus, he suspected Google used whois data, the registration data, to match the site with his name and show it as a keyword match in the search results.

He said:

Do you think Google would use whois data for keyword relevancy matching? Does it make sense to do it this way?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.