Main image of article Google Drops Banhammer on .CO.CC Subdomains
Google remove .co.cc from search index All 11 million websites ending with the .co.cc sub-domain has been removed from Google's search index. In other words, Google will no longer index these websites and list any of them in its search results. Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Webspam team, posted on Google+:
First, a definition: a "freehost" is a domain that will let anyone register a site on that domain. There's lots and lots of high-quality freehosts out there (wordpress.com comes to mind). We absolutely do try to be granular, but I wanted to mention that if we see a very large fraction of sites on a specific freehost be spammy or low-quality, we do reserve the right to take action on the freehost as a whole. I think most savvy search/SEO folks would understand this completely, but I figure it's better to over-communicate than under-communicate.
As .co.cc is not a valid country code second-level domain (like .co.uk), but rather, a private second-level domain of the .cc TLD, owned by a Korean company -- and considering the fact that it's providing free sub-domain registrations to the public, it fits well with Cutts's "freehost" definition. To complete the equation, the Anti-Phishing Working Group reported [PDF] 4,963 phishing attacks in the second half of 2010 from the .cc TLD -- of which 4,803 attacks were attributed to .co.cc sites. In contrast, the runner-up, .TK, accounted for 2,533 phishing attacks. Add the massive amount of spammy websites and blogs registered under the .co.cc sub-domain to the mix and Google has every reason to "take action on the freehost as a whole." Other websites registered under the .cc top-level domain will not be affected. Source: The Register