Google has banned my site

As you probably know, I enjoy developing things when I have some spare time (sometimes with a friend of mine). I have a long-term side project called HolaCloud which is a tiny cloud with some services crafted from scratch: a database engine, API Gateway, logs service, computing with lambdas and containers, authentication, object storage, etc. There were loads of pure fun and learning there. 

Two years ago, I decided to deploy all that stuff and make it public on the Internet under the domain "hola.cloud". The UI might not look very professional, but the best part is under the hood 😄. Honestly, I have to use the little time I have wisely.

Surprisingly today HolaCloud has been banned from the Earth. Apparently an algorithm decided that my site is too dangerous and malicious for people. Although the site is still online it is like hidden because a couple of details.

How did I know? I have received my first Strike on YouTube because I have a video with a link to hola.cloud. Pretty clever, uh?

After 30 seconds of talking to my coach (ChatGPT 4o), her best advice was to check the Google's Web Developers Console. 

A pretty awesome achievement, and without writing a single line of code.

Turns out all major browsers rely on the same “Safe Browsing” data from Google. That means a single company can decide whether your website gets to live or die. No need to mess with DNS, hosting providers, ISPs, or contact any authority.

HolaCloud is still banned. If you know how to fix this, I’m honestly begging for help.

Thanks for reading this drama. Have a lovely day 🌈

Update 2025-07-20 (the day after)

Opening Google and typing site:hola.cloud was the first thing I did when I regained consciousness the next day. Lots of entries there again flowing in the natural stream of Google's results page.

The massive red warning panel announcing how dangerous HolaCloud was gone in all browsers I tried. Even the first strike on my YouTube account had disappeared.

This is not the end, a few minutes later, one email from the domain registry sneaked into my inbox stating the following:

The link they provided was just saying that everything was ok so I just answered the email back asking to double-check the link:

By the time of writing these lines, VirusTotal is showing that 9 vendors are flagging my site as Malicious/Phishing. Actually more vendors than ever but none of them is Google Safebrowsing.

Thanks again for reading this. Have a great day.

Learnings

If your site has been unfairly flagged as dangerous/malicious/suspicious/phisingous there are some things to do while you are waiting.

First of all, double-check you have not been hacked and your site is working as usual. Take a look at your logs and metrics.

Open the Google Transparency Report and verify your site has been effectively flagged.

Then, open the Google Search Console and respond to the inquiry, stating that you and your site are innocent. Do the same in YouTube Studio if any of your videos link to the flagged site.

Optionally, you can fill out a Google Safebrowsing report error by selecting "This page is safe" from the combo, the URL and additional details.

With time and a bread, check your site on VirusTotal URL checker, then contact each vendor that flagged it.

If your domain is google.com flagging is "hard to provide a simple safety status for sites like google.com, which have a lot of content".

Resources: 

https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/
https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search?url=hola.cloud
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/
https://search.google.com/search-console
https://brennan.io/2022/11/12/snake.club-blocked/

Also linked from:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7353332764554756097/