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Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted

bryanbraun.com

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Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted

#101

Post by sealeck »

teddyh wrote: post #95

Calling a domain “haunted” is an awful, terrible way to frame it. It places all the badness of the domain on the domain itself , as if the domain name had something with it which could be removed or fixed by the domain owner. Instead, what has actually happened is that the domain is blacklisted by entirely too powerful entities. The problem lies with these blacklisting entities, not with the domain, and the solution…

> what has actually happened is that the domain is blacklisted by entirely too powerful entities. The problem lies with these blacklisting entities, not with the domain, and the solution must be done there, too. It should not be a domain owner’s responsibility to get out of being unfairly blacklisted.

These kinds of blacklists exist because these domains have been used to host scams or distribute spam (or some other malicious activity) in the past. They're there to protect people (e.g. so that Firefox can disply a "warning: this site is a scam") and reduce abuse. They're not just there so people at Google can get a good kick out of blacklisting random domains.

Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted

#102

Post by dazc »

veyh wrote: post #25

Some time ago I noticed that my side project (with a domain that is not haunted) shows up fine on Google but not Bing/DuckDuckGo. So I checked the Bing Webmaster Tools. URL Inspection says "Discovered but not crawled - The inspected URL is known to Bing but has some issues which are preventing indexation. We recommend you to follow Bing Webmaster Guidelines to increase your chances of indexation." That's quite unhelp…

A side effect of negative seo is that some stuff that hasn't worked on Google for a long time still does on Bing (They, Bing, obviously, not being the real target of the attack).

I've seen a few sites become de-indexed and the 'give away' is the type of results that first appear when the penalty is eventually lifted. For example, just a dozen or so urls with really weird query strings that never existed before. The real stuff does come back after time though and, in my limited experience, it's a one-off incident.

Just to add, not many sites are insignificant enough not to attract negative seo - especially this type of low-level, zero cost malarkey.

Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted

#103

Post by postcert »

lefstathiou wrote: post #80
a_t48 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be somewhat interested in seeing the cels. :)

https://www.neotokyo.com I have a +100 cel backlog that I need to catalog and photograph. Was planning to do it this holiday season so check back in.

You have some awesome cells, thanks for sharing them online. Had completely forgotten about Robot Carnival and neat to see you have a few pieces from some of the shorts(episodes?)

Also the resources->galleries was useful, found some new but actually old sites to check out.

Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted

#104

Post by perching_aix »

teddyh wrote: post #95

Calling a domain “haunted” is an awful, terrible way to frame it. It places all the badness of the domain on the domain itself , as if the domain name had something with it which could be removed or fixed by the domain owner. Instead, what has actually happened is that the domain is blacklisted by entirely too powerful entities. The problem lies with these blacklisting entities, not with the domain, and the solution…

I really disagree with pulling the power dynamic angle into focus here. Injustice can also be carried out by the "little man", sometimes even at scale, and is every bit as awful to remedy if not even more so.

The issue is with the issue: people/systems (big and small) blacklisting an ownable identifier pointing to some ownable content without any care for the lifecycle of either.

Painting this with a social brush is extremely unhelpful and is guaranteed to derail conversations for no benefit whatsoever.

Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted

#105

Post by r1ch »

This can also happen with IP addresses. We recently moved one of our sites to a new IP and got a trickle of complaints about it being inaccessible from various authoritarian countries. After some digging, the new IP was used as a Tor bridge (not even an exit node) over _ten years ago_. I gave up any hope of fixing that and just ordered a different IP address.

Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted

#106

Post by tekchip »

sealeck wrote: post #101
teddyh wrote: post #95

Calling a domain “haunted” is an awful, terrible way to frame it. It places all the badness of the domain on the domain itself , as if the domain name had something with it which could be removed or fixed by the domain owner. Instead, what has actually happened is that the domain is blacklisted by entirely too powerful entities. The problem lies with these blacklisting entities, not with the domain, and the solution…

> what has actually happened is that the domain is blacklisted by entirely too powerful entities. The problem lies with these blacklisting entities, not with the domain, and the solution must be done there, too. It should not be a domain owner’s responsibility to get out of being unfairly blacklisted. These kinds of blacklists exist because these domains have been used to host scams or distribute spam (or some other…

I'm guessing here because I'm not the author but I believe this statement is directed towards the blocklisting entities because they don't provide transparencies or a method to reach them to resolve issues with a domain once it's aquired by someone else. That absolutely is the issue of those entities.

Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted

#107

Post by postcert »

Citizen_Lame wrote: post #94
lefstathiou wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.neotokyo.com I have a +100 cel backlog that I need to catalog and photograph. Was planning to do it this holiday season so check back in.

Where does one buy cells, apart from ebay?

There's actually a page on their site under resources for that: https://www.neotokyo.com/anime-cel-dealers-and-resources

Yahoo Auctions is more popular over there and proxy services (I use Buyee) make it pretty simple bid/buy and not too much more expensive if you wait for their (Buyee) coupons.

Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted

#108

Post by johnisgood »

sealeck wrote: post #100
teddyh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Haunted” still implies that the problem exists at the house/domain , and can be fixed there. But a domain being blacklisted is not something which a domain owner can fix by themselves, they have to beg the blacklister to de-list them.

You'd usually describe a house as haunted if something bad has happened in the past (e.g. a murder, evil spirits, etc) and people are superstitious about this (e.g. believe some ghosts are still living in the house). Hard to see how an owner can fix this. All the usual problems the owner can fix (floorboards need replacing, gutters need cleaning, general repairs) aren't really examples of a house being "haunted".

Oh, I know people who spray holy water all around the house as a "possible remedy".

Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted

#109

Post by bryanbraun »

teddyh wrote: post #95

Calling a domain “haunted” is an awful, terrible way to frame it. It places all the badness of the domain on the domain itself , as if the domain name had something with it which could be removed or fixed by the domain owner. Instead, what has actually happened is that the domain is blacklisted by entirely too powerful entities. The problem lies with these blacklisting entities, not with the domain, and the solution…

The post talks a bit about this:

In a perfect world, when your legitimately good content isn’t being surfaced by Google, it’s a failure on their part, and their problem to solve, not yours. In practice, it is your problem and you have to do a bunch of work to help them see that their current assessment of your domain name is no longer accurate.

You're right, the fault lies with the search engines, but in practice it sure feels like the domain itself is tainted somehow.

Re: Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted

#110

Post by chrischen »

tekchip wrote: post #106
sealeck wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what has actually happened is that the domain is blacklisted by entirely too powerful entities. The problem lies with these blacklisting entities, not with the domain, and the solution must be done there, too. It should not be a domain owner’s responsibility to get out of being unfairly blacklisted. These kinds of blacklists exist because these domains have been used to host scams or distribute spam (or some other…

I'm guessing here because I'm not the author but I believe this statement is directed towards the blocklisting entities because they don't provide transparencies or a method to reach them to resolve issues with a domain once it's aquired by someone else. That absolutely is the issue of those entities.

If you could get out of blacklists by transferring ownerships then people can “wash” domains by fake transfers.
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