Can a domain name alone be considered SPAM?
-
If someone has a domain that is spammy, such as "http://seattlesbestinsurancerates.com" can this cause Google to not index the website? This is not our domain, but a customer of ours has a similar one and it appears to be causing issues!
Any thoughts? Thanks for any input!
-
In my opinion Google will look at domains as we humans do. If it looks spammy to us i'd tend to think Google may have the same opinion (or at least be a ranking signal) however, (a big caveat) the site may well host the best content in the world and have some uber immense backlinks and be an authoritative site in which case it should have no trouble in ranking.
A domain name in itself wouldn't stop Google letting it in the index - it's the structure of the site (make sure you're not blocking crawlers in robots.txt etc) and the quality of information hosted on it. So in short answer to your question - NO!
-
You'd have to have a lot spammier domain than that to think it could be penalised. http://www.buycheapviagralevitraanduggbootsonlinefromchristianlaboutin.com would probably not get much love.
http://www.photographypicturesphotosphotographer.com probably would get pinged for spam ...
Otherwise, I think you'd be ok.
-
ha ha...
That Seattle insurance domain is pretty clean if you ask me. I don't think that Google would damn it.
How about cheap-viagra-Rx.info
Just guessing... I don't think that google will kill a site because of the domain... but I think that only a certain type of person would register certain domains. So, probably a pretty good bet that they will do something that gets a really spammy domain toasted.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
1st Ecommerce site got penalized, can we start a 2nd one?
Hello, A client's first site got penalized by Goolge Penguin. It has recovered through cleaning up backlinks, but not to where it was before. It is 2nd and 3rd for several money keywords, but is far less successful than before penalization. We are starting a second site. Here's the important steps to mention The new site shows up first for it's domain name, and it has 30 pages indexed. It shows up NOWHERE for our leading search term. Out other site has a blog post that is 3rd for that search term. We are using new categories and new organization. We are using a different cart solution We are adding all unique content The home pages and some of the product pages are very thorough. We are adding comprehensive products like nothing else in the industry (10X) We plan on adding a very comprehensive blog, but haven't started yet. We've added the top 100 products so far. Our other store has 500. There's a lot of spam in the industry, so sites are slow to rank. Our category descriptions are 500 words Again, all unique content. No major errors in Moz Campaign tools Just a few categories so far, we're going to add many more. Same Google Analytics account as our other site It looks like we should eventually be on page 3 for our major search term. Again, we're nowhere for anything right now. ... Have you seen that Google will not rank a second site because it's from the same company and Google Analytics account, or does Google let you rank 2 sites in the same industry? We are hoping it's just slow to rank. If you can rank 2 sites, what are your best recommendations to help show up? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Scraped site, hijacked searches for business name.
Hello, I have a site that was scraped (possibly by a competitor's seo company), who then built links to the duplicate site. When people do a search for the name of the business the scraped site is all that comes up along with the usual third-party sites. They seem to take the site down and put it back up every couple of weeks to maintain the rankings in Google. Has anyone ever dealt with something like this? Any advice or recommendations would be appreciated. Search: LIC Dental Associates Scraped site: old-farmshow.net Legit site: licdentalassociates.com Thanks, Emery
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tntdental1 -
Steps to Improve Page Rank and Domain Authority
Hi If the quality of web pages is very good I believe rankings should reflect this. My domain is at least 3 years old.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOguy1
What steps would you recommend short term and long term in terms of how to improve page rank and domain authority? Thanks.0 -
Getting Spam Links
Hi There, I am planning to Disavow one spam domain but when check Google cache it shows my client domain name. So if I disavow this spam domain which link Google considered? Please help me. Thanks Satla
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TrulyTravel0 -
Online Store in trouble - What can I check?
Hello, One of our online stores has half the traffic that it did a month ago. What can I check and what can I do to troubleshoot? I can't list the domain here, but what would you suggest? Could RankBrain be the problem? So far I've Checked the functionality of the site including the checkout functionality Checked rankings for main terms, they seem to be holding Checked competitors, there's some sales but I don't see that cutting us off this much. Added content continuously for the past 2 months - quality, targeted, helpful Updated the home page text to be more helpful recently Checked for structural changes that would effect backlinks - found none. Analyzed Google Analytics, still looking deeper. What would you suggest as further troubleshooting?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
I am tempted to purchase a listing on an industry specific website directory with high domain authority. Will that be frowned upon as buying links?
I am tempted to purchase a listing on an industry specific website directory (http://marketingresourcedirectory.ama.org/) with high domain authority. Will that be frowned upon as buying links?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SearchParty0 -
Considering which agency to choose for a link building campaign is starting to seem like beating a dead horse.......
So first off, I've got to admit, I really haven't shopped around enough on SEOmoz's Recommended page. I have been doing some shopping, and have considered a few different people. The two main people that we are considering (or should I be saying 'were' right now?) is a company called Mainstreet Host. They have the best price, and when I first came into my partnership with Roseann at Uncommon Thread, she had already paid for some $1,500 trial of sorts. Our problems with these guys? Roseann says the sales guy is extremely pushy They want us to pay them a monthly fee to "optimize 11 pages, create 12 blog posts on wordpress blog, rss on homepage for fresh content, blah blah blah..." I was stuck on the fact that they want a recurring fee for a fairly small job I just looked into their ability to rank for the keyword they are targeting, and they rank #2 for a keyword difficulty score of 83. BUT, I looked into their linkbuilding and it's pretty blackhat. Several blog comments, mostly guest posts on what looked like some sore of article marketing site, and a few missing links according to opensiteexplorer.org did not say anything about link building other than a single Press Release distribution I guess my question is, is the $6,000 they want us to pay for those services actually going to get us to rank for some competitive terms? like keyword difficulty score 30 - 60? The other guys we have been considering is OrangeSoda. Right off the bat, they seem awesome, i mean just take a quick look at their site. but just like with the other company, they have a pretty dark backlink profile too. The only thing that they really have going for them is a few paid links on some sort of what appears to be semi-legitimate advertising partner based network. Google was on their too, near the bottom, which I thought was very strange, because it clearly discloses that its a paid network. They are asking $7,200 for 12 hours per week of work, in which time they will help us go through and fix any technical aspects, create a blog, and create content, as well as build a link building strategy. Should I keep shoppping??
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Adding Domain Names
Hi all, I am pretty new to SEO but i wanted to check out an idea with you guys, I have a business that is called Totaldriveways and the URL is www.totaldrivewaysne.co.uk Although Driveways is a big part of what we do, we are also heavily involved in other services to do with landscaping. The idea ive got is to brand each service with the "Total" for eample Total Driveways is a reconisgened name in my area and i would like to expand that into Total Patios Total Artificial Grass Total Driveway cleaning so each page and service come under a similar brand, my question is is it worth buying these domains also and directing them at the specific pages that they are relevant to, these domains are obviously keyword rich and am guessing will create extra traffic, but will i be penalised at all by google etc. I know this is probably simple stuff to alot of you's but i have no idea Thanks John
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | totaldriveways0