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This article reminds me of a Google webspam point of policy that I've been meaning to discuss for a long time. First, a definition: a "freehost" is a domain that will let anyone register a site on that domain. There's lots and lots of high-quality freehosts out there ( comes to mind).

We absolutely do try to be granular, but I wanted to mention that if we see a very large fraction of sites on a specific freehost be spammy or low-quality, we do reserve the right to take action on the freehost as a whole. I think most savvy search/SEO folks would understand this completely, but I figure it's better to over-communicate than under-communicate.﻿
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P.S. This is not a new webspam policy. Other parts of Google do similar things. For example, talks about "bulk subdomain providers" (treat it as the same thing as a freehost) and they mention "To help protect users we recently modified those [malware scanning] systems to identify bulk subdomain services which are being abused. In some severe cases our systems may now flag the whole bulk domain."﻿
Maybe you should do this with some top-level domains too, like .biz. :)

I've always been nervous about reputation mterics with negative elements — they're probably unavoidable in today's spammy world, but they have the problem of path-dependence: while metrics like PageRank (the one in the literature) and Levien's flow metric are guaranteed to converge to a single attractor regardless of initial state, if you add negative-weight links, you end up with a multistable system.

This reproduces an existing pathology of real-world social systems: it's easy to find Republicans and Democrats denigrating each other as "wingnuts" and "moonbats", and which group you end up regarding as insane depends on who you start with.﻿
funny thing that, I had totally forgotten about FREE hosts. Was the big thing back in the day. I suppose for many people starting out it is still an option (or other cases such as the blog hosting you mentioned). But, it would be a shame to have collateral damage to those that may not understand the risks of using them.﻿
Fake antivirus is better than real antivirus because fake antivirus actually stops slowing your system down at some point.﻿
Thanks for Sharing Matt, this came up in a training I did. Now I have the answer!﻿
I have heard a rumor that you can get dinged for being on the same shared host as spammy sites. Is that true?﻿
Matt, we provide a "Free Host" community service ( and its kind of clear when you talk about spammy, but not so clear when you talk about low-quality, can you give us some hints? Thanks!﻿
i so disagree. thats like having a majority vote against minority rights﻿
@Matt got a Q for "bulk subdomain providers" we use this features for our sponsorship sites, we provide websites and hosting to organization for free and use this type of technology to keep our cost down... will the 1000 + .orgs we work with get in trouble?﻿
Also what is the penalty point for it, so I can review our sites to make sure they haven't been hurt :( also whats the same for PR on these?﻿
What the fuss ... I've blocked these spamhosts on my SERPs anyway.﻿
Mine was too on Blogspot but thats not the point now. Many people are suffering from this. Google Should give a little chance to people who have there domain in so that they can redirect there traffic to there new .com domain﻿
+Lee Odden
Well, it is as same as I know lot of people that using blogspot to create only few page containing adsense with very little content.

As long as it free, the spammer will be love it so much! However, I can make sure, in blogspot case, you will only banned the bad guys only (even if they are million number spammer). But in case, you will ban them all because they are not yours :)﻿
That's pretty nice step towards fighting of Spams, but still there are many more private tld's which offer's same services.﻿
Hey Matt, we have a special anti-abuse API for trusted partners to help us fight spammy content on all free .TK domains. We already have Facebook and APAC using this actively. Is Google interested in implementing this? Simple HTTP/RESTful solution.﻿
Uhm...That's the answer why my site can not show Adsense ... Please Add again. All my money come from above domain, if can not show Adsense, I'll be a farmer ?! And another member who used domain do not agree that !﻿
I hate Google for its non sense actions. If you really wants to protect Google search against spammy or low-quality sites , write the efficient algorithms. Implement Adsense algorithm to know the sites' genuineness. Please don't reserve the right to take action on the freehost as a whole. And Kelvin my site can display adsense. Anyone please let me know if there is anything I can do to gain my page rank without changing I hate Google﻿
Hey Kelvin & Prathviaj. My domain was too in from 2 years and was on top in Google. But due to ban in Co.CC all traffic gone. My advise will be you should by .com as i have done and your site will be indexed in search engine in very short time.﻿
Thank you for your advice. I would rather go for I don't like to spend on my site as it hardly earns bucks.﻿
a domain name is pretty cheap! and if you have any long term wish to make money from your site you should get a domain name for it to give it a certain degree of "respectability" that will for sure help it in the long run too﻿
Is Google Again Updating As my New domain (.com) is now not searchable in Google which was coming in top﻿
I completely agree with you Matt....Bunch of spammy network sites on throw-away domains (from most popular porn or music or other high demand segments) to seed the fraudulent application and there you go ....this research tells how serious and organized this webspam is...﻿
Dan: you're saying your daughter is named "Linda" and a top hit for "Linda" on Google is a porn star?﻿
I'm a student, i pay my collage, rent and my other utilities from Google Adsense revenue.... now, i got nothing. thank you.﻿
Oh, oh dear. I see what you mean now.﻿
so I move to ".com" and leave "" behind with painfully of your decision! I never spam anyone and never make any bugs from my site (like Janet Aldrich)... I'm just a writer... who love to write....

To Janet Aldrich

I thought it mush be a long time if you still waiting.... because Google never mind on us. If Google allow Matt to stereotype all as spam, They never mind for our anymore. They mind for they "Adwords" and other business.﻿
Google should really avoid this, they should block specific websites as many websites do not Spam, and people are not willing to pay for a domain name (not just out of cheapness), and this affects their own Adsense revenue...﻿
It was inevitable that we should apply this solution, but I want to ask a question to Matt Cutts, the TK domain that allow the same function as but when I see garbage in there 'it a little, they too will be banned? I ask this because I am preparing an article on my blog : Thank you﻿
Actually it is like if you have infection in nail then cut your whole hand out..Only time will tell Matt﻿
Somehow this is not fair. The "Free" domain I own is actually not as free as it seems. I paid for it so no one could take it, and now, it's no use as I cannot apply SEO for my site. That is kind of not fair. And this basically means I have to pull-out some money for a domain again. I own a social blog, and it is non-commercial, also this solution is used wide by volunteer organisations that do not have enough resources to spend on web-hosting. This looks more corporatism than social and basically forces everyone to migrate to a money-based service.

I've always seen Google as a more social-oriented company than as a company that makes people pay corporations for web-hosting.
Now it is obvious that Google went to the dark part...

All these eventually will make me switch from Google services to other ones, such as Microsoft's. After all - there is nothing making a difference between them at this point.﻿
Many of us leave from to paid domain, And that mean there are cost for everyone who did that while google de-index... Than now, you just re-index without any word "SORRY"?﻿
+Matt Cutts Hello Sir,
I have used co .cc domain to redirect to my wedding website on How to tell google to exempt my website as I have printed it on my wedding cards...Its urgent for me..Please help sir.﻿
Hi Matt, A retired Aussie Pensioner I used domain week I accessed my original webpages with ftp and later discovered the 'cocc' was gone. Same time lost use of all my Google stuff including Search Earth and Gadgets etc. I value your facilities, why am I unable to regain their use? The web domain aside this is very bad.
Please help sir.﻿
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