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constant domain flagging (55)

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Hey guys!

What a meeting in Berlin it was!

Оur landers are constantly getting flagged as 'Phishing url'.

we've got a custom software that alerts us and allows to change links in bulk in Voluum via api, but still its a huge pain in the ass.
sometimes it can happen 2-3 times a day.

What could be the reason?

What's best solution for this issue in your experience?

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I have the same issue, am just switching domain every few hours, and host my LP on a CDN so i cant get IP-flagged.

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Do you use the same domain for all campaigns?

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No, we use them mostly based on geo.

Eg - one domain for us, one for eu, one for Asia, one for au

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And do they all have different offers behind them?

It happened to me that one offer was the only cause of domain flagging, but in more than one geo.

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Use two different domains, one is your tracking domain, the other the LP.

Visitors hit the tracking domain first, and are then sent to the LP, if the LP gets flagged, you only have to switch that domain out.

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Cloak Google ISP in your tracker and you should be fine for some time.

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unfortunatly, thats not the case. Im cloaking everything, but still getting flagged very often

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Doesn't work, Google Safe Browsing also ignores robots.txt.. Else it would be too easy to keep domains alive for a very long time.

What I noticed is that it's not so much about the content of the landing page but about the redirects afterwards, aka the offer.

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After I did it I dont have problems for over 2 months, but yeah I use more rules than only that.

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Yep, I filter the ISP too but it got flagged afterwards too. It probably helps at least a little but it's far from bulletproof.

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of course i do that, but thanks


Hey Erik,

mind sharing the other rules?

also: does anyone knows actual reasons behind these bans?
user reports maybe?

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Maybe Google knows but aside from that they are all more or less accurate assumptions, that when put together lower your chances of getting flagged.

Your domain can get flagged by because it gets traffic from another certain domain, because of content, because it links to a certain outward domain or IP, which maybe requests resources from a blacklisted domain, can be user reports, etc. Work out a system to renew it, forget fighting to make it perfect. It will probably depend on your niche and traffic source how often you get flagged too.

I see this syndrome in the affiliate marketing world of looking for the 100% stable solution, when there isn't one that includes you still running traffic.

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What kind of offers are you running?

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mostly sweeps.
also av, diet, binaries

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Is it google that bans you? Or Microsoft?

I have the most issues with IE giving a phishing alert. Chrome, not so much. Only once every few weeks. Since im switching domains i never had chrome issues, but IE is still a pain.

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in my case - chrome

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Because of the stopbadware alliance between MS, google etc, if you are caught in smartscreen filters your domain will be flagged all over. It's frequent. What I do is use wildcard domains and search for the reported urls then block the ips or ISP if it's not a huge telecom like Comcast etc. That's how I am now able to get a few days per domain. They don't just come from Google ISP btw. Best thing would be to keep running and keep filtering.

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What I mean is I'm not blocking only Google, but also lot of other datacenters, IPs, proxies etc, also some detections on LPs. I do not say it's 100% bulletproof. As @manu_adefy mentioned, you cannot be 100% stable in this industry and you also shouldn't only focus on that, but the more checks you cab do the better for you.

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Reminds me I made a list of ISPs that could be useful...

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Is there a noticeable difference in flagging time when using an aged domain / blog / with some authority? Worth throwing into a test. Grab a dead site on flippa. New domains = easy to classify as spam.

Are you getting dedicated IPs for each domain?

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Hey guys. Does anyone know of a service that will help see if a domain is flagged ? Across all browsers/ISPs etc

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Just use http://www.virustotal.com

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Virustotal submits your site to the databases when you check them with it.

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Thanks mrpayne. Thought I heard the same as pain2k just mentioned. Any paid solutions maybe with some automated processes that would clear cached content type in a domain/url into all kinds of browsers and send a notification if a domain is flagged ? I thought of browsers stack with like some automation script though - don't really have any time to look for someone who can write an automation script. Was hoping there's an existing solution

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does anyone happen to have a list of Gogle and Microsoft IPs to prevent from Chrome and IE flagging ?

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This issue is actually the reason why I finally joined STM today.

I'm also using Voluum (but still not with a custom tracking domain!) and now that domain gets flagged in Chrome, Firefox and Safari Mobile since about 24 hours. What confuses me is that also two domains I'm using to host the landing pages (one on Amazon Cloudfront, one on a VPS hosting) are getting flagged.

As I'm new to this "domains getting flagged" subject I'm wondering if changing both the Voluum tracking domain plus the landing page domains will solve this issue, and for how long. Up to now, I had no problems and I have run more than 10M visits through Voluum to those landing pages in the past few months. I also haven't changed significant things on those landing pages.

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Do you use the same domain for all landers?

It's often that some advertisers/verticals get you flagged more often so you should use multiple domains based on offer or vertical. That helps you not get flagged everywhere because of one small issue in your funnels.

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Listen to @manu!

Especially if you run AV campaigns definitely separate them on different domains.

You don't want all of your campaigns going down because of one domain getting flagged.

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Thank you Manu and Erik.
This is the reply from Voluum I've got. "It is quite common that both tracking and the hosting domain is being flagged. If someone's reporting the site for malicious content, they usually report the whole redirection path, so the publisher, tracking domain and a hosting domains are hit." -> That's maybe the reason why both my Voluum tracking domain and two landing page domains got flagged.

So I'll use not only one custom tracking domain, but several ones, and I'll replace the two burned domains with a few more.

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you probably need to start using a new server.

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So I've spent this week on changing domains for the landing pages, and I'm using new custom tracking links in Voluum. After I was almost done, but now I noticed that Microsoft Smartscreen is already blocking two of my landing page domains. Extremely frustrating, almost one week of work and not one step further

For the two domains that are now in Smartscreen Filter, I've used different custom tracking links from Voluum. That tracking links themselves are ok to visit in Edge. The two blocked domains were used for different offers, and were hosted on different places (Beyondhosting and Amazon). I have not used them on the same traffic sources (pops). The only thing they have in common is the use of backfix.min.js and a welcome sound. Now I thought that could be the reason, but I was using one landing page for a long time (until it got blocked by Chrome and FF last Sunday) and it was never blocked in Edge. So I'm left clueless on why this is happening after everything was running smooth for half a year. Any hints are welcome...

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get an in-between page that can dynamically change your LP domain

So Voluum --> inbetween page --> throaway domain

Then just switch the throwaway domain out every few hours or so, .xyz domains are cheap, i buy 50 a week of them to use as throwaway domains.

Keeps my domains safe, on the inbetween page there is a simple script that redirects users with a 301 to the right throwaway domain (stored in a DB)

Using this on search though, not sure or its fast enough for pops.

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Hi Presfox
Thank you for the tip!

So your landing pages are on throwaway domains, and keeping both the tracking domains in V and the domains with the inbetween pages unchanged is working? So this might be a solution then. So all LPs could then be hosted on the same throwaway domain, as it will be changed again after 24 hours or so. That would also solve the problem of having it's landers appear in spy tools.

On the other hand, I was more looking for a "white hat" solution where I can keep my campaigns a bit more stable.

I'm still trying to find out why this happened after not having to bother with this issue nearly for years.

Maybe the blocking happened so quickly again due to the high amount of traffic? Or maybe I should restart everything using "cleaner" landing pages (without sound, without JS popups, without exit popups, without the backfix.js, no fake user comments)? And maybe I should get one LP domain per traffic source, because the issue is maybe tied to one of the traffic sources? Maybe I should start a "follow along" thread here (I'm new to STM)?

And I have asked three traffic souces where I was spending >1k$/month for hints, maybe they can also give me hints fo find the reasons for the bans.

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the issue is that its user reporting. So if users have issues with your LP's, they will be banned.

I doubt its active reporting, but probably has to do something with user behaviour on your pages

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Maybe it's a combination of scripts used, amount of traffic to a newly registered domain (which could even trigger a manual review), as you mention user reports... And maybe it's even the traffic sources that are on the radar, as for example Google mentioned that using intrusive popus on your sites will probably hurt your rankings. But why should they go after the advertiser and not just after the site allowing the popups?

Anyway, all my campaigns are still paused. I'll restart them tomorrow with a new setup: for each traffic source I'll use 2 new domains, one for the "normal" LP I've been using in the past and one without intrusive scripts (JS popup, backfix). This might help me learn if it's really the scripts (but won't tell me if it was banned due to user reports/user behaviour or due to the browsers algorithm) or if it's the traffic source.

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Just had one of my domain names removed by NIC and an email reminding me of acceptable use. Anyone else had this?

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trafficprotector now has an API that can detect flagged domains and post back to your server if it happens.

Easy to hook a domain change in then.

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We've been going back and forth with flagging issues on AV campaigns for the past year. Mainly we find the quickest flag is IE / Smart Screen.
Best way is to assign unique money domains the rotate at least every few hours depending on the amount of traffic you're sending.

Also we noticed aged domains do make a big difference. What we do is buy aged domains for the networks and rotate AWS S3 buckets every 30 minutes (we have a script that does all this). Saves a ton of money using the S3 buckets vs buying real domains as well.

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Unfortunately, TrafficProtector doesn't cover Smartscreen / Edge yet, that's why I cancelled my subscription there after 2 days.
Because it really seems that the Smartscreen filter is much faster thant the Chrome/FF/Safari filter.
It just happened again to me, just after 10 days of sending "only" 400k visitors to LPs on a domain (getting 50k Clicks) overall. I don't know how many of those 400k visitors came from IE or Edge, but I'm sure it was much below 100k as I hadn't even enabled IE&Edge on all campaigns. At least now I know that backfix.min.js was not the reason for the previous warnings, as I had replaced it with another short script.

I'm going to try it with another domain that I had registered a couple of years ago, I'll report back.

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I would test not using a domain and just using the IP address of your server. You don't "have" to have a domain, people should be able to access http://1.2.34.56.7/lander.php just fine. Many sites can be hosted on 1 IP address so maybe they won't get blocked as quick. Worth a try.

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Bumping it up! @osmiumman - How did the smartscreen story end for you? Trying to find a solution for this as well.

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Hi @osmiumman have you sorted out constant domain flagging problem ? or any other STM member ?

same problem now we are facing nowdays

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There is really no fix from this other than to run a more compliant campaign.

If you are running any software/av type products these are the issues you will run into unfortunately as with both google and ms this is baked into their browser and FF uses googles tech...

It used to be that you could wildcard the subdomain or even make a ''unique'' page url per click would work.....but these services have become much smarter so they now block anything once the root domain is tagged....

The honest truth is most of the reasons why you get listed is people complaining about your pages....people report them as phishing which almost instantly gets you on the ban list....it takes very few people to report before the flags kick in...

You can attempt to remove your pages from the SS filter, and I have done this with success in the past....but often the pages will get blacklisted again if you continue...

also you can setup google webmaster tools on your main domain, then google will give you the url of the offending pages...and often the reason why....to which again if you correct you can get the red screen of death to go away.....

The download biz over all has become an incredibly tough vertical to run profitably, many of the networks who specialized in this have dropped from the game or went a more compliant route....

Note that IF this is software you own rights to you can get kinda ''whitelisted'' with SS....as long as it complies with their policies....

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One thing I am absolutely positive above..... Checking your domain to see if it's flagged will get you flagged 20x faster.

For example I used to run an offer where the lander domain got flagged every 24-48hrs and it was like this for a solid 6+ months, the very day I signed up for a flag checking service, my domains started to get banned in 30-90 minutes like clockwork. As soon as I stopped checking my domains, back to 24-48hrs.

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Had something similar but to be fair, I didn't really have a good experimental setup to be sure it was the checks causing the flag. Thinking about it from a logical perspective, if I were an owner of Google Safe Browsing or whatever, if a domain is checked too often, I would instantly ring some alarm bells to check it manually or something because a normal domain rarely gets put through such a tool.

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Logically I would agree with you but my custom tool checks some of my domains as frequently as every hour via VirusTotals API, and they have been running for months with antivirus offers, no issues. Various geos and sources.

While VirusTotal may submit the domains into a database, not sure if Google Safe Browsing has access to it but I personally would not serve anything directly to Google.



Andrew

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Good to know - depends then on the service you query as well then. Generally there's no way to not get domains flagged though I think. I had totally compliant stuff flagged too because of the connection with a certain publisher or offer.

Checking and replacing them in a timely manner is the better solution for sure.

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I ran some AV offers for 4-5 days and have since stopped doing them but I'm suspecting something might be up. I don't want to use Virus Total if it could result in a flag.

Are there any telltale signs of your domain having been flagged/any way to manually check yourself?

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If you visit your page, you will see if it's flagged or not.

One thing you can do is query the Google Safe Browsing database - you don't ask which domain was flagged, Google simply tells you all the flagged ones and you search in the DB for your domain so there's no "risk" of telling Google or anyone else to pay attention to a domain because you are checking it often or anything of the sorts like I speculated earlier in the thread.

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I just got 2 domains flagged today. Before it happened like once per month or so, but now two on the same day? This is really frustrating... And I don't run Tech Support or AV, I use mainly a kind of wheel LP with the Facebook-like top navigation bar and some fake user comments. Maybe getting rid of these two elements might get me safebrowsing warnings less often? But it will probably decrease CVR...

I run about 15M impressions per month, not such a huge number I think. How are the big guys running pops? Do I really have to change domains every 1-2 days in the future?

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Now I even got my Voluum Tracking domain flagged today, something that didn't happen since last October to me. Are we up to some big changes in Pops?

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Google got better at flagging such domains in the past year from what I talked to everyone around in the industry. We don't see all changes that happen, but we are affected by the results.

Hard to say what the best move is overall - automatically detecting and replacing it is an obvious solution, although it means having to spend a few dollars per month on domains.

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Look...

There are really only two long term options here. You could totally try what everyone else has suggested. They are certainly wise options if you have the time and cash to play around figuring it out.. But if it were me, I'd look for the quickest most economical route or ditch it and look at the enormous other traffic providers of the world instead. Google Shmoogle.

Option 1 = Buy your way out of this clusterfuck = Find an already established set of domains that are branded and have some age on them. Find the owner, and make offers to buy it out. It's helpful if you claim it's for some not for profit organization that helps children with no legs walk again, or something that really goes for the heart strings. If you manage to acquire it this way, don't be a dick, and definitely do make a sizable donation, put the seller's name in it too, email that to him, etc etc. You don't want to tempt karma. But if you can't get it on the cheap or this way, then your next best bet is to build your own. I know, if you knew how to do that you wouldn't be in this clusterfuck to begin with. Fair point, but to speed it up, you're going to have to assume you sir are filled with kryptonite and that shit is getting all over your domains... so what I'm saying is buy a clean lil network. How about one of those PBN things all those foolios that think they are amazing at SEO all swear up and down about.. private blog networks, yeah. Those silly things. They come cheap. Buy one, don't taint any of it with changing the quality of the content, and just start using some of the satellite domains orbiting the primary. You shouldn't have much trouble after that, unless of course you are actively being a shit and meddling in AV related topics, then this is all a massive waste of time and resources.

Option 2 = Play dirty and rough = Look. I know it's cute to think we are all pals here, but we aren't. We're all competitors. Some play dirty and ruthless, most do not. If you want to dominate, like REALLY dominate, blood and guts style, you must start playing dirty and looking at things differently. For all you know, your stuff works just fine, and a "friend" of yours is just being a dick and reporting it. Do you have any idea how easy it is to get any number of the sources Google Safe Browsing depends on to wrongly decimate a url or even an IP for being labeled "phishing"?? lol! Put it this way, it's so freaking easy, that when I was a product owner, our pages that we made for banks to approve (these pages had no way to submit any data, they were blanks, and they used HTTPS back when no one would) would get flagged for phishing by our idiot competitors ALL THE TIME. So often, that we actually became a source of theirs to set the standard of what was a legitimate phishing page for offers and what was not. Yes, that is how easy it is. So when you figure this out, go and submit all of your "friends" pages too. They deserve it. Plus people are getting away with things way too easily sometimes, and they kinda need some more problems in their life. --- and the shady part is just plain paying someone inside off to cut that nonsense out. In my country, we call this lobbying. In yours, they probably call it bribery. Tomatoes, potatoes. No, but bribery isn't a joke and if you're going to play in that realm you had better have two sets of lawyers covering your ass..... or a corp set up in the Isle of Mann. Either or...

.....or just spend hours and months doing it the hard way.

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Actually, Google has gotten worse at it. Their latest results are like the funniest things. It seems their algos are getting confused with their latent semantic AI algos. Give it a month, you'll see what I mean. It's almost as if a child is running operations behind the scenes there. But no one wants to tell them because they aren't quite sure if serious.

Oh yes, those fuckers are def serious. But the results are still a joke.

You can get away with a lottttttttttt nowadays. I see captain obvious seo spammers getting away with keyword stuffing still.. lol! Can you imagine that? KW stuffing! lol

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