Nowadays, there at least 22 countries that block some websites. China alone stands behind a block that can limit traffic to your website to over 1 billion visitors. But do not get frustrated if your website get blocked in one or another country. There are time-tried techniques around the majority of these Internet blocks using which you can enjoy unrestricted communication with the people all over the world. Sunshine Agency touts having most clever developers, programmers and marketers who have wide experience in addressing the problems of international websites’ development and promotion.
Regional promotion of your website is getting more important for a lot of international companies and becomes a real problem when your website gets blocked by a filter in one of the countries or even at home. You spent so much money on creating website and promotion, and now everything seems to be futile.
But blocking goes well beyond countries. Though less dangerous and damaging in essence, many corporations and regular people also apply blocking filters to limit accessibility of particular websites. Regardless what their prime objective, ranging from boosting employee productivity or restricting access for under-aged, the bottom line effects are generally similar.
So is your website being blocked by filter? Does it mean that the target audience does not have any means to access your website and, if that is the case, what you should do in regards to it? Here’s a brief description of the current website blocking situation and what it hold in for your company.
My Website is Blocked, Now What?
Once you realize that your website is blocked, the natural reaction is to find out who blocked it. There are two types of filters to take into the account: Government filters and private filters.
Government filters are different in different countries and are characterized by persistent changes, a website that’s blocked one day in a region tomorrow might be alive once again.
The best approach of dealing with government filters is to check on a consistent basis whether your website is still alive in key target markets. For instance, you can effortlessly check whether your website is alive in China and also Iran.
Most regions that have government-set filters have a free service that allows people test to see which domains and website addresses are banned, a simple Google search is generally good enough to find them.
Private blocking systems involve much more challenges. Though they are less dynamic, meaning that outcomes are more likely to remain as they are, there are so many corporation, medium and small businesses that apply filtering to their networks that it’s real that one company filters out your website while hundreds of others don’t, or vice versa.
This is made more intricate by the fact that employees of these companies often can set up their own filters and, sometimes, websites can fall the victims to simple filtering algorithms or errors in them. In a nutshell, prediction of any kind whether you are going to be banned by one of these algorithms is hopeless or futile.
Though email services have public blacklists for spam, few such things are available for private content filtering on the internet. This can arrest any attempts of testing or changing the landscape, particularly when attempting to learn reasons on why you are being filtered out or to contact and ask for alternations.
Why Am I Being Filtered/Blocked?
There’s no panacea to guarantee that your website is or is not going to be banned by the different organizations but there are a few vulnerable points that increase the possibility of your website being stuck in one of the above filters.
- Your Content: If the content on your website is 18+ or pornographic in nature, then it is very likely that you get banned by both government and private blocking systems. Political websites may be blocked by governments but it is very unlikely that they are going to be blocked by private networks. Even non-offensive entertainment content may be filtered by some office systems developed to prevent no work-related usage of the Internet.
- Your Domain: If you place your website on a subdomain of a giant site, such as with Blogger or Tumblr, your odds of being filtered out increase as a blocking system intended to catch another website on the service can get its hand on you. Also, if you have an unfortunate domain name that, while innocuous, may set off some filters.
- Your neighborhood: Though content and domain issues are alone quite serious, a lot of internet filtering relies on IP neighborhoods. In this context, websites that dwell in the same server with your website can be the reasons you to get filterd, even if you are not aware they are there. This is mostly a case with gigantic common hosts that hold dozens, even more of websites on the same IP neighborhood.
To be concise, there are tons of factors that can get your website blocked and many, unfortunately, are absolutely uncontrollable. The situation can be even more depressing, if you are wrongly or randomly filtered out, your hands might be tied in the case.
What action should I take to get unblocked?
The sad truth is when it comes to public blacklists and filters, you are in the checkmate position. Even if your company is that big and bold to afford to appeal to regional courts, more-often-than-not you would not have much luck with it. Fighting with law system or the government itself is time-consuming, painstaking and frustrating process. The reward may not cover all the expenses you put in.
Private filters, however, generally can be questioned in the court. Your task is to find a person at the filtering organization to get in touch and ask an analysis of your website. Using this technique and being patient, the odds are you can get rid of the ban from your website and get it reclassified.
Nevertheless, even afterwards, there’s no warranty the system will function smoothly and, in some situations, it doesn’t. Besides, some organizations don’t even have an adequate system of petitioning or legal proceedings.
Moreover, legal appeal is not almighty in the eyes of the regional legal system, at least in the U.S., strictly upholds the right of private households and organizations to block IP address of their own accord. In addition, many local governments in fact claim that educational entities and libraries must use proper blocking systems.
As flawed as these things look, apparently, they will not change for the better very soon.
Bottom Line
In conclusion, if you suddenly find out that your website blocked by filter or banned, your immediate actions should be lowering or eliminating the risk factors altogether that may be the very reasons your website being banned by government or private companies. Be patient in the process, it’s really all that one can do. All things considered, blocking and filtering is just one of those visible things that reflect that your website contents or hosting matters enormously from the legal perspective.
After all, the last thing you want is one blunder or simply bad luck to make your site get invisible to a big number of your customers, but that is precisely the future you may see with the current advancement of web filtering technologies, both on the government and private horizon.
If you have some unresolved issues concerning blocking and filtering, Sunshine Digital Marketing Agency can provide you with a free consultation, and, depending on the scale of the problems, take it upon themselves to solve them.
