Digg Lets Banned Domains Back In

It seems Digg has unbanned a list of sites by letting them back in. From what I have noticed here are the sites that have been allowed back in.

If you see any inaccuracies in the list or know of any other sites, please feel free to leave a comment.

**Update: Check out Naffziger's Net for more domains.

Enjoy the post? Here are some more that may interest you.

SES

Trackbacks (6)

Cost Per News, February 23, 2007

“ReveNews Still Not Allowed on Digg” — Lots of sites such as John Chow, Online Marketing Blog and SEO News Blog are now re-allowed to play reindeer games on Digg (Real Estate Webmasters?). ReveNews still isn’t allowed. March is “Read Banned Blogs Month” (I just made that u...

Final Tag, February 23, 2007

“Digg un-bans some domains” — Every once in a while, I would come across a story on some blog that I thought was very “Diggable” and click the “Digg this” bookmarklet on my safari toolbar with the hope to add one more homepage story to my month old digg acco...

Swollen Pickles, February 23, 2007

“Has Digg re-opened it’s gate?” — The flood gates have opened, the beast has awoken, the penny has dropped, insert whatever you like here. The point is, it seems Digg has finally done the right thing and ?¢‚ǨÀúunbanned?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ a whole bunch of domains (including swollenpickles.com) that i...

John Chow dot Com, February 23, 2007

“Unbanned From Digg” — I just got an email from Skitzzo at SEO Refugee that John Chow dot Com has been unbanned from Digg. At first I thought this maybe a joke so I tested it out by submitting the 10 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid post and sure enough, the submission made it. I...

PaulStamatiou.com, February 23, 2007

“Briefly: Digg, Firefox, Million Dollar Avatar” — Lots of things going on today so I’ll just briefly cover them. First off, Digg has had a change of heart and unbanned many domains, including mine. Next time you feel that something is digg-worthy, fire away. Mozilla just rolled out a small upda...

Search Marketing Gurus | Search Marketing Tips, Advice, Strategies, March 2, 2007

“We Can Bitch About Digg All Day Long” — In the past week, Digg's been the subject of a lot of articles. From unbanning legitimate newsites and blogs like TopRankBlog, JohnChow.com and others it had previously let its' Digg Thug Posses mark as spam, and adding new categories like Microsoft an...

Reader Comments (49)

Tanner Godarzi, February 23, 2007

You have to wonder why Digg would allow these banned domains back. They don't give a good reason why they were banned and ow they are allowed back. Very interesting.

Andrew Ferguson, February 23, 2007

http://www.dingorue.com is another you may want to add to the list. They were previously banned for (from what I understand) having a post that mistakenly linked to a site with adult content.

Now they're allowed back in! Which is good, it was a mistake in the first place and he does a good job of covering Heroes & reality TV.

...not that I'm addicted to Heroes or anything.

Neil Patel, February 23, 2007

I updated the list.

Wendy Piersall :: eMom, February 23, 2007

I'm having a hard time finding the logic as to why these blogs were banned in the first place - can you expand on this?

Lee Odden, February 23, 2007

Ha, I'm still not adding that digg widget back to our site posts. :)

Thanks for the heads up Neil.

Neil Patel, February 23, 2007

Wendy, I am not sure why these blogs where banned. I think if too many users complain that a site is spam, Digg bans the domain.

luca, February 23, 2007

Thanks, I've realized it by reading your blog now. It's funny that they haven't sent any email advising about it.

Soultrance, February 23, 2007

Hey Neil,

Thanks a lot for adding me to the list, my friend Andrew let me know I was unbanned when he came across this.

Wonder what's up with Digg.

Soultrance http://www.dingorue.com

Mr. BabyMan, February 23, 2007

Some celebrity sites that had been previously banned like The Blemish and The Superficial, are now also unbanned.

Neil Patel, February 23, 2007

Thanks, updated list.

HMTKSteve, February 23, 2007

Must be a database error. I'm sure they will fix this problem in short order ;)

Damascus, February 23, 2007

Has Tribalwar been unbanned? :(

Fred, February 23, 2007

journalspace.com was also unbanned.

Wendy Piersall :: eMom, February 23, 2007

Thanks Neil - but that is an interesting point. I would hardly call most of these blogs "spam".

There was an interesting conversation on another blog in which one of the commenters spoke of a spammy post on Digg - but hadn't bothered to read it. His point was that "he didn't have to read it" and agreed that it "must have been spam" because simply based on what some Diggers said.

This is dangerous ground (I know this is an old conversation at this point...). I consider spam to be blatant, untargeted and anonymous advertising. Crossing over the line and calling a post you don't agree with or don't like as "spam" reeks more of censorship and an abuse of power.

I'm glad to see that Digg as a company was willing to revisit the banning of these sites. To take a few spam flags and ban a domain site unseen lacks judgement and ethics.

Just my $.02. :)

Neil Patel, February 23, 2007

Wendy, I agree with you. Most if not all of these sites are not spam which is why I am pleased that Digg let them back in.

As for Digg users claiming they are spam, it seems that a many of them jump to conclusions.

Vamsee, February 23, 2007

You might find the reason here.

http://digg.com/technews/WhyTheDiggMafiaWillCostKevinRose_Millions

This story got over 300+ digg's but apparently never went to fornt page. There was lot of mess about the entire issue.

Avinio, February 23, 2007

My Blog also unbanned. i guess our fight against digg was too much for them ;)

Luis, February 23, 2007

I truly wonder how the banning system works and why digg's website states that they will never un-ban a website that has already been banned.

Vamsee, February 23, 2007

Since previously posted url was wrong I am trying to post the url again.

http://digg.com/technews/WhyTheDiggMafiaWillCostKevinRose_Millions

Dave from PoopReport, February 23, 2007

I'm glad Digg is starting to recognize this issue. My site, which is dedicated to the "intellectual appreciation of poop humor," is banned as spam -- even though it is NOT a spam site. Sure, the humor is ribald, but does that qualify for a lifetime ban for my domain?

I don't know why my site was reported as spam to begin with. I tried contacting Digg, but was told politely that there was no point in whining. Now, maybe I'll try whining again.

Dan, February 23, 2007

My site http://www.literallyeverythingblog.com was allowed back in. It had been banned for absolutely no reason for several months.

phplemon.com, February 23, 2007

I noticed this earlier today, i'm glad the Digital Point forums are allowed back, i think they are a great website.

-- Phil

Pro-SEO, February 23, 2007

They also unbanned my SEO blog Pro-SEO.

It's not like im desperate for thier traffic, But i think it does show that now, Even digg thinks the carpet ban on any site labeled "spam" by digg members was a bit unfair.

Paula Neal Mooney, February 23, 2007

Yes, I was very happy to see that Digg let my http://www.paulamooney.blogspot.com/ blog back in after months and months with no good reason why they banned me. But it's cool...I got a lot more pub being banned! Congrats on making the front page of Digg...

Paula

Paul Stamatiou, February 23, 2007

Great news. This time I'll make sure to only submit my absolute best work so that they don't all get buried and hinder my domain status.

PK, February 23, 2007

How about RoughlyDrafted.com? Great informative, passionate site on Apple history and strategy.

Adam, February 23, 2007

Also eioba.com is unbanned now.

Alex, February 23, 2007

You can add techreads.com and quickrss.net to the list, along with cybernetnews.com.

baron, February 23, 2007

I think this is some kind of general amnesty. Here's another one that got unbanned:

http://www.theplugg.com/

I don't see any specific criteria one way or the other. What gives?

Ralph Dagza, February 23, 2007

My other site pinkprank.com is not banned anymore. I think they banned mine after i posted the infamous pics of ms nevada

baron, February 23, 2007

I'm suspicious now. This could be a database corruption. Check out the search results for John Chow, he has an identical story splintered into two:

http://digg.com/search?s=johnchow.com&submit=Search&section=news&search-buried=1&type=url&area=all&age=7&sort=new

Lee Odden, February 23, 2007

Some wiseass with the handle "Hilton" submitted an unworthy post from our blog this am (along with about 10 others - at least 2 hit the home page) and of course the post from our blog was buried. I would prefer people not bother.

francesco mapelli, February 23, 2007

www.mapelli.info has been unbanned too. It was banned with my first post on that blog. A sad story. (But the post was a bit spammy, so maybe I deserved it). Maybe they started to understand that the community wasn't happy ... ore they were just annoyed by all the complaining emails (I sent them four and they never replied...)

Beren, February 23, 2007

www.tribalwar.com has been unbanned also.

(proof: http://digg.com/gamingnews/ComputerGameInspiredRing )

Swollen Pickles, February 23, 2007

It seems they have allowed swollenpickles.com back in as well!

Ibzi, February 23, 2007

Looks like the popular iwebtool.com has been unbanned aswell.

Andy, February 23, 2007

Good catch baron, do we have any official words from Digg yet?

Dave Naffziger, February 24, 2007

Neil, on Monday I did an analysis which found 183 sites in the Alexa top 10,000 that were banned by Digg. (the story hit the Digg homepage and was subsequently buried).

I just reran the 183 banned domains, and it looks like all but 6 of them were unbanned. I won't paste the full 177 unbanned domains here, but you can find all 183 domains here: http://www.naffziger.net/blog/2007/02/19/the-secret-list-of-sites-banned-by-digg/

and the 6 still banned domains here: http://www.naffziger.net/blog/2007/02/23/impact-digg-unbans-some-domains/

Based on Digg's ban messages, there are three types of bans. It looks like all of the 'permanent ban' sites have been unbanned, while the 'temporary ban' sites remain banned for now.

Charbarred, February 24, 2007

I think it's a smart move on their behalf. The banned domain list on digg has become so big that a lot of important sites were not covered by digg. Moreso a lot of bloggers would not submit their own sites (or friends' sites) in fear that they will get banned as well. The result is that a) Many site owners turned to the competition (netscape, plime, stumbleupon) b)Digg was becoming an irrelevant news source. The question to ask is whether the banning rules remain the same. If so, digg's huge "bury brigade" of 12 year olds who are not interested in anything that is not Apple or Wii related will soon get all these sites re-banned.

Smaran, February 24, 2007

You missed http://WordPress.com (without the www), Neil. It was unbanned two days ago.

Neil Patel, February 24, 2007

Thanks guys, I updated the list.

jim, February 24, 2007

also add skattertech to the list (was also blocked) its kinda like engadget but a bit slower i just saw my blogspot was also unblocked anyways heres the link to skatter tech -> http://skattertech.com

Terry, February 24, 2007

Looks like Michael over at Techcrunch spoke directly to Kevin Rose about the unbanning: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/23/digg-upgrades-spam-armor-unblocks-sites/

Rene Kriest, February 26, 2007

WordPress was banned? ROFL!

Thanks for the list.

UVa guy, February 27, 2007

Wordpress back in is good stuff. I got cauth with that a couple times.

Go Cavs!

NEW SITE GETS BANNED FROM DIGG WITHIN 6 DAYS - Steve, March 28, 2007

Digg.com is getting cocky and banning small web sites just because digg's users submit them to digg and digg's moderators don't like it. Scifidigg.com is the latest victim of Digg's "We are big, you are small and we can do whatever we want" attitude. First some background. After running the website Scifi2u.com for the last year we realised there was a demand for a scifi digg type website - 6 Days ago ScifiDigg.com was born and is powered by open source Pligg and the YouTube API. So what went wrong? The site went live on the 22 March 2007. People submitted stories and video links to digg and other sites del.icio.us, Yahoo, Simply and Reddit. Having a submit button makes submitting very easy and fast but that could be a problem. Let's get to the point WITHIN 6 DAYS THE SITE HAS BEEN BANNED FROM DIGG Digg's moderators decided that since the link pointed to my site and the posts are mainly videos from YouTube ScifiDigg should be banned from digg and no other links from scifidigg.com can be posted to digg. Digg's response I contacted digg to find out what happened and why they blocked my site. The response I got from them was that my site violated their terms of use, by copying another site. I explained to them that although the video is streamed by YouTube we give the facility for original coments to be added. The response I got was that they do not allow sites that copy other sites to be submitted to digg. I told them that according to their rules they should also ban Yahoo news, since it does not have an original content but republish articles from PCWorld, Reuters, MACWorld and others. Also falls under this category other major sites like neowin.net, blink.nu and many more that are doing exactly the same infact they should ban YouTube because the video content is often copied from other video websites. But hey, they are big sites and digg can't pick on them without repercussion, like they can pick on small blogs that try to establish themselves. So what have we learned? ?Ǭ? Digg's users don't really determine what gets promoted, but digg's moderators do. ?Ǭ? Digg have a different set of rules for small site and different rules for big sites, even though both are doing the same. ?Ǭ? Digg will ban a small site just because one of its user's submitted an article that other digg members liked and promoted, but moderator didn't like the link. ?Ǭ? Digg will not listen to reason when told that the site did not violate its TOS.

I am going to create a Digg.com clone http://www.BannedDigg.com Watch this space!!!

gio, May 17, 2007

Do you know how long when digg unbann your site?

frEE, May 25, 2007

In my honest opinion, sites like the digital point forums and the JohnChow blog, shouldn't have been banned at all, because they are great ressources.

constructicle boy, June 13, 2007

well.i think that digg knows that all these sites are the top rated sites in the internet world and is quite stupid to ban them