How to check a domain for employment, search engine filters and other troubles? How legal aspects should be considered when choosing and checking a domain?
What are the stages of domain verification?
- 1. You need to check the domain for employment.
- 2. Checking for search engine filters.
- 3. Checking domain history by whois
- 4. Domain Link Profile Check
- 5. Check for "glue", if parameters are important
- 6. Legal due diligence for trademarks and commercial designations
1. Check the domain name for availability
The procedure for checking a domain for employment is to find out if the selected domain has an administrator.
A domain name administrator is a person who manages a domain, i.e.:
- has an agreement with the registrar (not necessarily paper);
- manages the domain (assigns NS records, renews, redirects, etc.).
Buying a domain name, you will also become not its owner, but its administrator.
Data about domain name administrators is stored in special databases of registrars. There are a lot of registrars, but in order to systematize information about domains, a special protocol was created for accessing all databases - WHOIS.
Where can I check if a domain is free?
You can check a domain for employment through any domain name registrar.
The most popular domain name registrars in Russia are NIC.RU and REG.RU.
Each registrar has a search box to check if a domain is available.
They are not the best, but I also use their services. Each registrar is good for its purpose. Some are distinguished by reliability, others by the cost of domain names, and others by convenient payment methods.
BUT! there is one caveat here. It happens that the selected domain name, when checked through one registrar, is indicated as "occupied", while through another registrar it is free, but has the status of "premium".
If the domain is busy - is this the end?
No, it's not over yet.
First of all, a lot of beautiful domains are intercepted by cybersquatters or simply "resellers" - for subsequent resale. Usually, when you navigate through such domains, instead of a website, you will see a “stub” with an offer to buy a domain.
Secondly, nothing prevents you from contacting the domain name administrator via whois contacts and offering to sell the domain. Many agree to do so.
Thirdly, there are a lot of domain zones now - in addition to ru, there are international zones and many "thematic" zones (.shop, .cafe, .marketing). Pay attention to them too.
2. Checking the domain name for search engine filters
This is the most difficult part of the verification, for which there are no universal tools. Search engines, fighting with unscrupulous site owners, introduce various filters (for example, Yandex's AGS or Google's Panda).
One of the verification options is to register a domain at your own peril and risk (fortunately, domains are relatively inexpensive), place one page instead of a full-fledged site, and add the site to Google Webmaster Tools and Yandex Webmaster. Both services have a section listing some of the filters of these search engines.
But the webmaster does not receive any notifications about the imposition of most filters. They can be known only by indirect signs.
Before developing a site on a domain, I would recommend paying attention to the following details:
- whether this domain was registered by anyone before (how to do this, see step 3);
- whether there was a website on the domain;
- how successful this site was in terms of traffic from search engines;
- how "human" was the content on the site;
- how natural is the link profile (incoming links to the site);
- how the content and link profile of the previous site matches your topic.
All this is difficult to understand for a beginner. It is better to contact a professional before investing in a site for its promotion - otherwise everything can go down the drain.
An abandoned domain with a previously successful site is already suspicious. In this case, there is a very high probability that the site fell under the filters of search engines.
3. Domain history check
For domains in the ru, su, rf zone, there are special services where you can check the domain for who previously owned it. Here you can also check the age of the domain - when it was registered for the first time and when it was registered by the last owner.
What is worth paying attention to here?
how many times the domain owner has changed;
whether there were periods of time when the domain was free.
However, for other zones with viewing the history of the domain, the situation is a little more complicated.
Also, in the search for Yandex or Google, there may be some pages that have not yet fallen out of the index.
4. Domain Link Profile Check
The point of this procedure is to find and analyze as many incoming links to the domain as possible.
Firstly, their presence most likely indicates that the domain name was previously registered by someone.
Useful links analysis services:
- linkpad.ru
xtool.ru
ahrefs.com
What you should pay attention to:
- how many links there are to your domain;
- How many sites are links coming from?
- how many unique ip addresses links come from;
- ratio of anchor/non-anchor links;
- ratio of links from profiles/catalogues/articles;
- spamming of donors and others.
5. Checking a domain for gluing
Such a check is useful if you register a domain with a non-zero TIC indicator (usually they are much more expensive).
And very often such a TIC for domains is not real, but "glued". In the future, such a TIC "falls off".
Here I will not dwell on the very essence of the "glue", but simply give one of the services for verification:
6. Legal Domain Check
Such a check is obligatory (!) if you are going to develop a serious project from which you plan to receive money. Otherwise, you may have problems - you may be forced to pay compensation up to 5 million through the court and the domain will be taken away. I'm not even talking about the fact that you may not be able to register your trademark corresponding to the domain.
Minimum check:
— through the service https://egrul.nalog.ru/ for the presence of registered company names confusingly similar to your domain (for legal entities);
— through the service http://ptn.su/Patent/Otkritie_reestry_Fips_Rospatenta.html to search for trademarks that are confusingly similar;
- through a search in Yandex and Google for the presence of companies using commercial designations confusingly similar to the domain name.
Name Generator with Domain Name Checker
If you have not yet chosen a domain name, you can use our name generator, with which you can immediately check the domain for employment in different zones.
You can also order a domain check for your business from us. Just leave a request in any convenient way.
We have released a new book, "Social Media Content Marketing: How to get into the head of subscribers and make them fall in love with your brand."
It's great when you know exactly why the traffic on the site has fallen and positions are hanging far from the top. But there are situations in which the lack of growth in indicators becomes a real mystery. Sometimes SEOs become real detectives. Let's figure out how to check if the site is under Yandex. Let's learn how to recognize the Yandex filter by symptoms. At the end, I will add an algorithm of actions on how to find out for sure that the site has fallen under the Yandex filter.
Check site for Yandex filter: spam
One of the most common filters. The problem is that sometimes a working page that has been in the top for some time can suddenly go under the spam filter. When positions drop sharply by 10-15 points, you should immediately check the document for oversaturation with keywords.
Symptoms:
- A sharp drop in positions for one request by 10-20 points;
- When the search query is modified, positions increase significantly;
- For other queries leading to the page, the document is ranked as it should.
We check this way: we take the request of interest, for example, “legal support”. We drive into the Yandex search box and find our page. For example, we are in 19th place. Then we slightly change the word form of the request or change the order of words, for example, “legal accompaniments”, and see how the position of our page has changed for this request. If the difference is 10-15 points and the remaining conditions are met, we can diagnose overspam with a high degree of probability.
Treatment:
We simply reduce the number of occurrences of this query or change its word form. We are waiting, if it does not help, we remove another entry and again we are waiting for the update. Ideally, analyze competitors and count the number of occurrences of this key on their pages and do the same for yourself.
It makes sense to check the anchor list of the document. It is possible that the spam was due to an excessive amount of the keyword in the link anchors.
Define Yandex filter: re-optimization
It also occurs frequently. They mostly penalize pages with excessive bold/italics, inconsistent sentences, a huge number of characters.
Symptoms:
- Sharp subsidence of the page in the search for the entire group of queries leading to the page;
- The drawdown is 20-30 positions (the site is in the TOP-30 or TOP-40);
- Significant loss of traffic.
We check:
It is necessary to compare our document with a competitor that is 5-10 positions higher. We do this with the constructrequest (site: oursite.ru | site: konkurent.ru) . We look, if each time, substituting a competitor in the query, we see that our site is locatedbelowand the remaining conditions are met, there is a high probability that this is a re-optimization. For example, a request“buy a bouquet of flowers”, and the entire group leading to the relevant page sank. We find our document in the search, for example, at the 40th position. We look at 5 documents that are above us in the 35th ... 30th position. We substitute them in turn in the comparison request and see which site is higher.
Treatment:
We completely change the text of the page, remove the selections in bold and italics. Rewriting the text, we try to make it useful, human. We are trying to get into the thematic cluster, well, this is a separate story about writing content.
A great example of reoptimized text:
Check the site for Yandex filters: "untitled"
This filter is also called "new filter" or "ranking constraint". It is very similar to reoptimization, but there is one significant difference that makes this filter much nastier. It immediately punishes a group of pages with similar topics, throwing out pages beyond the TOP-100.
Symptoms:
- One to one similarity with re-optimization;
- Subsidence of a whole cluster of pages by 50-100+ points.
Check:
By the principle of checking re-optimization, we compare our site with a competitor from the TOP-50 with the same search query. That is, 49th ... 40th place. If in most cases our resource ishigherof the analyzed competitor, a high degree of probability that a “ranking restriction” is imposed.
Treatment:
We remove unnecessary occurrences of requests from different areas of the document, including the attributes of pictures and links: alt, title. We rewrite the text of all pages that fell under the sanctions. We remove some of the direct entries and excess selections in bold, italics, etc.
Before diagnosing this limitation, it is necessary to exclude all other options for losing positions: server response errors, affiliation, and others.
Manifestation:
Checking the site for Yandex filters: link explosion
A fearless filter that can only be accessed by doing black-and-gray SEO. The downside of a link explosion is that some time before and some time after the fact of the explosion, link factors cease to influence positions.
Symptoms:
- A one-time increase in a large number of links from different domains.
- Lack of influence on the ranking of link factors.
We check:
With the help of services like ahrefs.com or megaindex.ru, we look at the dynamics of backlink growth. Well, in general, you are probably aware of the purchase. It is impossible to accurately diagnose the fact of the explosion, only to assume.
Treatment:
Time will heal. Just wait a couple of updates without buying links.
If you buy a bunch of links from a single domain, there will be no link explosion. It's easier not to fall under the filter. Just buy links smoothly from different sources and show constant positive dynamics.
Yandex filters: how to check a site for Minusinsk
The sensational filter for buying SEO links. There is a lot of information on it, we will not go deep into it.
What is punished for:
- High percentage of SEO links compared to natural links (approximately when 40%+ SEO links of the total);
- Total number of SEO links (no more than 500 SEO links);
- Anchor list parameters (too many commercial keywords in anchors).
Release date:
The best result is 1 month. The average exit from Minusinsk is 3 months.
Symptoms:
- The vast majority of requests (except microLF) fall by approximately 15-20 positions;
- Metrica shows a sharp drop in traffic from Yandex;
- Felt on all subdomains.
Treatment:
We completely refuse to buy SEO links. We remove links and write in those. support that we understood and admitted our mistakes and promise not to be naughty again. If possible, speed up page indexing.
You can analyze your link profile, find obvious SEO links and remove only them. Then write to Yandex, report that everything has been fixed. If it does not help, remove another portion of backlinks and repeat the action. Additionally, you can increase the number of natural links.
How to check a site for Yandex filters: PF cheat
Everything here is extremely simple and very tough. If you wind up behavioral factors - be prepared, you will definitely be punished.
What is punished for:
- Artificial improvement of the PF within the site.
- Boosting clicks on SEO links.
- Artificial increase in transitions from the search.
Symptoms:
- The site sags sharply for all queries except vital ones;
- Search traffic disappears;
- Yandex tech support gives a definite answer.
A very long period of exit from the sanctions, sometimes exceeding 9 months. Sometimes it's easier to start a new site than to get out of the filter.
Yandex filters: how to check affiliation
They impose on the sites of one owner in order to prevent a monopoly in the issuance.
Symptoms:
- Regular jumps in positions for requests that intersect between two sites;
- Only one of the two affiliated sites is shown in one query.
We check:
With a search query lang:ru ~~ domain: ua<< (url:www.nashsite.ru | url: podozrevaemiy.ru). If you enter this request and only one of the analyzed sites appears, you are affiliated. If both, there is no filter.
Treatment:
- We are moving to different hosts.
- We change contact information (so that it is different on affiliated sites).
- We make a different directory structure (if the sites were made according to the same template).
- We make a different structure of landing pages (again, if sites were made according to the template).
- We change the registration data of the domain (so that there is no one owner for two domains).
- We promote with different strategies (for example, so that there is no identical link profile).
Sites live well in affiliation if they move along a different semantic core.
Check Yandex sanctions: aggressive advertising
Symptoms:
- Search traffic is reduced by 30-50%
- The site does have psychedelic ads
Treatment:
Yandex search filter: adult content
If your site contains profanity or videos containing "adult" content, you will not be shown in Yandex using the family filter. I don't see the point in describing the symptoms and treatment.
Rarely, but it happens that sites that are linked to with "adult" anchor text can fall under this filter.
How to check:
We are looking for our site in the family search, if we don’t find it, we uncheck the box and look at the adult issue. If you find your page there, this is it.
Check the site for Yandex sanctions: identical snippets
Sites with non-unique or non-informative snippets are hidden.
Symptoms:
- Loss of positions for one / several requests;
- Most often, product cards suffer.
How to check:
We go into the search, drive in a request and add characters to the URL&rd=0.Similarly to the old “show all” button, we see all, even hidden, results. If indeed there are identical snippets, this is probably the reason for the drop in positions.
Treatment:
Rewriting the content of the description meta tag. If a snippet is pulled from some area of the page content on the site, you need to rewrite this part of the text. Entering the snippet of the company name helps a lot.
Keep track of the uniqueness of snippets within your site!
Yandex search filters: search engine deception
Using cloaking, that is, showing different content to the search engine and the user, is bad. Well, in order to screw up like that, you really need to want it. Black Hat SEOs already know what happens. Therefore, we will not dwell on this.
Checking for Yandex filters: AGS
It threatens mainly non-commercial sites aimed at selling links. If you trade links, then for you.
Symptoms:
- The site is more than six months old and TCI = 0;
- Drop in search traffic.
Treatment:
Very painful. It is necessary to rewrite all content, remove corrupt links and other disgrace. In general, if the site is focused on making money with selling links and terrible advertising, then it's easier to create a new one.
For dessert: the algorithm for checking for Yandex filters
If there are problems, then we look at whether the site fell under Yandex filters according to this algorithm:
- We check if the document is indexed, the server response code, if there is a ban on indexing, we look at the robots meta tag and the robots file, if the link rel="cannonical" (if any) is configured correctly. If everything is in order, go to point 2.
- We look whether the document passed the quorum and look at the binding to the promoted region. Just add the url to the document address: nash-site.ru/document and see if the document is located - everything is in order and go to point 3. If it is not, then the problem is not in the sanctions.
- If there is a suspicion of an adult filter, we set “without restrictions” in the Yandex settings. See if your site is being searched. If the filter is not found, move on.
- Site age. We look at the date of the first indexing of the site and understand that if the site is young (less than 3 months old), this may be the problem with positions and traffic. You can check it like this: we drive a request into Yandex, find our site and add &how=tm to the URL line and see the date of indexing in the snippet. If older than 3 months - move on.
- We check the page for the same snippets. If we find a filter, we stop and work with snippets.
- We are looking for an affiliate site by the method of successive exclusion of suspects.
- We are looking for duplicates on the site to exclude the possibility of interrupting the relevant page. We check with the title search operator:our titlein order to find the same. If we do not find identical pages, go to step 8.
- We are looking for spam according to the instructions above, modifying search queries. We found a spam - we stop. If you don't find it, move on.
- We diagnose overoptimization using the instructions described in this article.
- If all the points are passed, but the problem of subsidence of positions and traffic has not been identified, we compose a letter in those. support and waiting for the sad news.
By analyzing the problematic pages of the site according to this checklist, you can most likely find the cause. Thanks to the instructions above, you will be able to diagnose and find out the sanctions applied, making sure of your assumption and solving the problem.
I sincerely hope that the article will help you on the difficult path of website promotion.
Hello, regular and occasional blog visitors!
Today's topic of the article is devoted to a serious issue - consideration of search engine filters, their symptoms, causes of overlap and how to avoid falling under the filters.
I’ll note right away that the filters of two search engines, Yandex and Google, will be considered. traffic from the rest is negligible. Each search engine has its own filters with their own algorithms, but in general they are very similar. We will consider Yandex filters separately from Google filters.
This article is about Yandex filters. Yandex is inferior to Google in terms of the number of filters - this is good for webmasters. The second plus for site owners is that they have a chance to write to those. search engine support and ask if their site is under the filter, to which you can get at least some answer.
AGS filter
Perhaps the most famous and widespread filter developed and improved over time by Yandex.
AGS stands for Anti Shit Site . Such a slangy and harsh name is the merit of the Internet community of webmasters, who began to divide sites into SDL (sites for people) and GS (Shit sites). This abbreviation "GS" has entered the Internet so deeply that even Yandex employees have decided to use this term for the name of the filter.
As you might guess, HS are low quality sites, designed not for people, but only for making money (usually by selling links). It is obvious that such resources do not bring any benefit and only litter the Internet, so it is advisable to exclude them from the index, which Yandex does.
It is easier to determine this filter than others: if you notice that the pages of your site have dropped out of the index of a Russian-language search engine, only the main one (or 2-3 pages) remains, then this is the first symptom of the AGS filter.
You can check your guess like this:
- Go to the Yandex.Webmaster panel or read the article about where you will need to enter the address of your site's domain (website). After that, you will see the number of pages in the index. If there are very few of them (one, two, three), then your site has suffered for poor quality.
- Try to add any page of your site to the Yandex adduril. If you cannot do this (the site is prohibited from indexing), then this resource is under the ACS filter. The last article, just about.
Having eliminated the reasons for the site falling under the ACS, you can count on getting out of the filter.
Falling site positions
This filter leads to the fact that the position of your site suddenly drops sharply. But at the same time, the site is indexed normally, and the pages remain in the Yandex search results.
The reasons for the drop in traffic are low quality content (for example, copy-paste), very outdated and untrue content, a large number of errors in the text, etc.
There is a way to roughly determine whether your site is under this filter or not. To do this, copy unique piece of text(which is definitely not on other sites) from the page that fell under the filter, and insert it into the Yandex search. Look at what position your site is in - the lower the resource, the higher the likelihood that the site is under the filter.
Falling positions due to PF cheating
Cheating behavioral factors can also lead to a site falling under the filter. The result can be a drop in positions for many queries a few pages further. The first symptom of the filter is a sharp drop in traffic from a Russian-language search engine.
Fortunately, there is a tricky way to define this filter: select any keyword that is part of the semantic core of your site, and enter it into the search engine, check the position of the site. After that, enter the same request, but add "-dsfsdfsdf" separated by a space, where (dsfsdfsdf is any meaningless combination of letters). This "hack" allows you to see the position of the site without the influence of behavioral factors. If in the second case the position of the site was higher, then your site fell under this filter - stop artificially cheating the PF.
Affiliate Filter
An affiliate is a branch (branch) of a company. In our case, an affiliate should be understood as follows - a “branch” of some site, i.e. its a different but very similar version. Usually, this is used by the websites of companies and organizations that provide services or sell something. This is done in order to capture the entire search results and force out competitors. Of course, Yandex, who wants to diversify the issue, is against this.
You can also fall under the affiliation filter if you have a similar semantic core, similar content (pictures, articles, keywords and descriptions, headings, structure) or site design.
Checking the presence of this filter is quite laborious: enter a search query that is in the semantic core of both the first and second sites, and check the output. If both sites are in it, then the filter is not applied, if there is none, then it is under the filter.
These four filters are the main Yandex filters. Fortunately, they can be identified by "symptoms", after which it is possible to eliminate the causes of falling under Yandex. But, of course, it is better not to bring the matter to sanctions from the search engine, but to promote the site in "legal" ways.
Sites located in RuNet are more influenced by two search engines: Yandex (about 73% of the total market share) and Google (about 21%). It is the filters of these projects that make many seo-optimizers and webmasters waste their budgets and use exclusively white methods of promotion.
Checking Yandex filters
The most common option is the AGS filter. This filter applies mainly to low-quality resources that use off-the-shelf promotion methods. As a rule, such projects do not bring any practical benefit to visitors and are used only for profit.
Yandex considers it expedient to exclude such projects from the index so that the results are of better quality and more relevant. The filter is easily determined by the number of indexed pages. If it suddenly decreased to 1-5, then this filter was probably applied to the site. The same can be said if the pages of the new site are not included in the index at all.
Ban is the second most popular. In this case, absolutely all pages fall out of the index. You can check the presence of this filter using the webmaster panel. If the resource cannot be added in any way, then it is banned.
Also, now there is a new filter that lowers the position of a site that winds up behavioral factors. To check, you need to stop cheating (if any) or analyze user actions. If the number of bounces has dropped sharply, and each visitor views several pages, then they are probably trying to set you up in the eyes of the PS.
In addition, you can use another method. Enter a keyword and see where the site ranks. Then add "-any text" to the query. For example, "site-dumplings". The results will be displayed without taking into account behavioral factors. If in the second case the positions are noticeably better, then the filter is applied.
The “dropping positions” filter is applied to resources that, according to Yandex, wind up the link. To check it, just copy some piece of unique text and paste it into the search bar. If the page is not in the first three positions, then the filter is most likely in place.
The last one is the affiliate filter. It is introduced when the search engine suspects that the resources belong to the same person. To check, it is enough to enter a keyword from the semantic core of both resources. If they are both present in the search results, then there is no filter.
Checking Google Filters
The most popular filter from Google is the sandbox. Young projects do not reach the first positions in search engines due to the indexing period. This period can last from several months to a couple of days.
It all depends on the speed of development and progress of the project. You can check the presence of a filter using positions. If in Yandex a site is in the first place for low-frequency queries, and in Google somewhere in 30-40, then it is under the filter.
Also, domestic sites often fall under the Supplemental Results or “snot” filter. In this case, the pages of the site will not fall into the regular issue, but into the additional one. Accordingly, it will not be possible to achieve at least some results in promotion.
This filter most often includes sites with a template design and non-unique text. To check, simply enter “site:http://yoursite.ru/&” in the search box and compare the number of pages found with their total number on the site.
The "Florida" filter is applied to reoptimized assets. For example, if the pages have a large number of keys and "nausea". The main sign of this filter is a sharp decrease in positions. Otherwise, unfortunately, there is no way to check.
For the same reason, a more malicious filter can be applied - “minus thirty”. It is named in honor of the fact that all positions of the site fall by 20-40 points. According to Google, there is no way to get out of this filter. In addition, after a while the site may be banned altogether.
