Banned domains: Google isn’t always your only enemy

There are horror stories of Google banning domain names and delisting them from its search index.

The 800 pound search engine gorilla can certainly do as it pleases; after all, it commands the majority of the world’s search traffic.

In that sense, there are times when domains are removed or banned without much recourse. Perhaps their content was deemed dangerous or related to malware, viruses and scams.

Google is not the only enemy, however.

A domain I bought a few days ago, had been parked at GoDaddy for almost two years. During that time, it displayed GoDaddy ads.

Prior to that era, it was a commercial web site promoting antivirus software and Windows registry cleaners.

Once I acquired it, I parked it at Sedo. A couple of days later I tried to see what ads were being displayed and the connection was being interrupted every time I attempted to view it.

I contacted Sedo, and they were able to view the domain without a problem. Others did too. I was baffled.

Then I decided to turn off my Avast antivirus for a few minutes. Lo and behold, the parked page came up.

I did some research and apparently Avast likes to store domains it deems dangerous in some remote database, blocking all users of its software from accessing them. There is no way to even turn the feature off.

That’s truly bizarre for a domain that was parked at GoDaddy for almost two years.

I emailed one of their virus lab analysts, citing the domain and my Avast version. In less than 24 hours, the domain had been removed from their database.

There are many reasons to do plenty of research prior to acquiring a domain; potential blocking by antivirus is one such field to be researched.