Google removed 11 million .co.cc sites from search results



    In one move, Google removed 11.4 million sites on the “free hosting” http://co.cc from the search index . Perhaps this is the largest mass ban in the history of Google, although only one domain is formally excluded.

    According to statistics from CO.CC, they now have 11,393,121 subdomains owned by corporate and private clients.

    The reason is that .co.cc began to be popular for phishing and distributing malware, especially for distributors of fake antiviruses . According to the latest report from the anti-phishing working group ( PDF ), 4963 phishing attacks were registered from sites in the .cc zone in the second half of 2010 - this is twice as much as from any other domain zone.

    The .cc zone belongs to the Cocos Islands, and the .co.cc domain belongs to the Korean company. Single subdomains can be obtained there for free, but there are tariffs for bulk orders . For example, 15,000 are sold for $ 1,000, or seven cents a piece.

    Matt Cutts , head of Google’s anti-spamming team , explained that they regard CO.CC as free hosting. Google has the right to exclude free hosting entirely if it has noticed many sites with low quality or spam content.

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