Altavista doen't like my submissions...

...nor any from the entire C class.

[Machiavelli]

When I try to submit any page to altavista from my own domain or any other page in the same C class it brings up the old 'we can't connect to your server' message, although there is nothing wrong with any of these servers.

I mention the C class because all the domains in it are hosted by one company.

Is the C class banned, or is there it likely that AV really cannot find a route through to the server?

[tigger]

Machiavelli

I hope I'm not sounding to thick here but what is C class ?

[Machiavelli]

Sorry, that is a bit jargony; I simply meant this: say my ip address was 10.20.30.100 then the C class would be 10.20.30.* - in other words, 255 different ip addresses. So a not-inconsiderable number of possible domains to ban, really.

[rcjordan]

Machiavelli, welcome to Wmw.

>'we can't connect to your server'
I haven't read anywhere that AV is returning this message as an indication that you're banned.

It is possible to get a C class banned.

[seth_wilde]

From your description, it sounds like it is a technical problem. Although RC's right and it is possible to get a C class banned, AV Hasn't shown "banned" messages in months, (and when they did, it was the "submitted too many urls" message). Have you asked your host about this yet?

Edited by: seth_wilde

[grnidone]

Machiavelli,

Welcome to the boards, and I *love* the nick.

Does this mean I have to fear you? ;)

-G

A little background: Machiavelli believed that people didn't respect you unless they feared you...

[drbill]

AV will ban a whole class C if there is spam comming from that Class.

But I have to agree with Seth. Sounds like a tech problem not ban.

[Machiavelli]

Hmmm... I still think that it may be a ban. You see, all AV spidering stopped dead exactly on 1st November - and not just on my domain, but also on a few others for which I have web log access. Between us we were getting a few dozen spiderings daily during October and then in November - zilch.

I have had a look at some of the other sites in the C class and there is quite a bit of cloaking as indeed there is on mine, but none of the cloaking is dodgy (I know lots of people think that any cloaking is dodgy, but what I mean is that this stuff is non-spammy SEO which exactly reflects true content).

I personally think that this is a shot at cloakers - AV I think is saying "any cloaking is considered spam, and if we can uncover your cloaking and discover two different pages, you're out of the index."

NM

grnidone: While I am in exile from AV, probably not. But I'll return....

[seth_wilde]

Well, I guess the only way to find out for sure is to email AV. As for the whole "any cloaking is considered spam" thing, you should check out the cloaking/stealth forum, there's some great discussion going on about this.

[Machiavelli]

This was the message I in fact got - I paraphrased wrongly before:

[big]You have entered the following URL: [/big]
[domain_name.com ]

We could not connect to the host at this time.

I'm still pretty convinced that this is a banning thing - the thing is, if I speak to AV about it and they point out that there is cloaking, do I have a leg to stand on?

Could a ban have happened from someone on the same IP submitting vast quantities of pages?

[mark_roach]

I just got the same message when I submitted a tripod.de page (a free pages site I think) which has a link to my site. That might suggest that you have been banned.

[seth_wilde]

"if I speak to AV about it and they point out that there is cloaking, do I have a leg to stand on?"

This shouldn't be a problem...just turn off your cloaking for AV(it's not like your going to loose any positions) also clean up anything else that could be considered spam....

"Could a ban have happened from someone on the same IP submitting vast quantities of pages?"

Yes AV just acknowledged this at the Dallas SEO conference yesterday.....

[roscoepico]

As far as the message you received concerning the fact that they could not connect to the host at this time, I was seeing this on and off yesterday. All I did to correct the problem was click the back button and try to submit it again. I was 100% successful. To my knowledge AV will not give any indication during the submission process that your domain is in fact banned. On another note I'm not sure how long AV will be able to continue banning entire C-classes, with recent annoucements concerning the lack of ip's available for distribution. With more and more people sharing ip's, AV would be excluding millions of websites from consideration.