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May 26, 2008

Google Temporarily Penalizes Blogspot & Info Domains

Over the weekend, I noticed reports from WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums suggesting that Google dropped .info and blogspot results from its index.

First reports came in at around 9:50am (EST) on May 23rd at both forums. Massive panic actually started where we saw dozens of forum posts with members not understanding how Google can completely wipe off many (not all) .info TLDs and all Blogspot results. Here is one person's reaction:

But banning all .info domains without any apparent reason is greatly surprising.

But most felt this was a pretty large Google bug and they were right.

About five hours later, Webmasters began to see the old results come back to life. At 2:49pm (EST), we got reports from WebmasterWorld that the info TLDs were coming back into the Google results. Then at 4:33pm (EST), we received similar reports from DigitalPoint Forums.

Imagine that, Google delisting most of the .info TLDs and blogspot hosted blogs.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.



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posted rustybrick in Google Optimization at May 26, 2008 8:37 AM Comments (2)

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Comments

If Google decided to de-list all blogspot hosted blogs I would support their action as long as they allowed for the blogs to be re-listed using some sort of verification process to make sure it's not a big load of spam.

 

Posted by Jeremiah at May 26, 2008 14:39

I think it is not just temporarily! I run an Anti-Spam project PHSDL http://www.phsdl.net and I have been getting tons of posts with Zlob Trojan Malware domains to the project's honeypot forum over the past few years.

While recently I have not had much Spam with Blogspot sub-domains, but very often I had to place Blogspot.com on the PHSDL Spam list.

For Google fighting Zlob Trojan comment Spam is a losing battle, just check Google groups and you will find Porn Malware all over them.

I think Akismet and Spam Karma are now blocking Google dot com domain url in comment posts.

I would highly recommend to all Blogspot Bloggers to register a proper domain.

 

Posted by Igor The Troll at May 26, 2008 16:18

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