Google greeting

[barrys]

If you google Comics UK Forum, you get a link to this site at the top - all well and good. However underneath is the following message:

You have been permanently banned from this board. Please contact the Board Administrator for more information. A ban has been issued on your IP address.

Don't know if you can amend this - presumably it's some weird google default -I've only just joined the forum and it's been great to communicate with like-minded souls but the message isn't as welcoming as the people it introduces you to!

[colcool007]

That's strange as I get

Comics UK is dedicated to those great institutions, the British Comic and Story Paper dating back from the the late Victorian era through Beano to 2000AD and ...

Are you logged into Google when you get this and what browser do you use?

[philcom55]

That's weird - I'm getting the 'permanently banned' message first as well!

- Phil R.

[AndyB]

Curious. I tried signing out, but didn't get the permanently banned message.

Can other people look out for it and let us know?

[barrys]

You have to type in Comics UK Forum Andy, not just Comics UK. If I type Comics UK I get the same as you - if I type in Comics UK forum the top site I get is headed Forum - Comics UK with the message I quoted undernesth that. The next site is the main Comics UK page with the message you quote. I am just using a normal google search not Google Chrome.

Hope this helps

[AndyB]

Looks like we've banned a google bot! The problem is that at one stage we were absolutely tortured with non-google bots, and a lot of IPs got banned.

I wonder if the cache will reset itself... we'll keep an eye on it.

[Al]

I've just done a little bit of digging and discovered that Google uses a few IP addresses when it is spidering.

One of the IP address ranges is 66.249.64.0 - 66.249.95.255 and we had placed an IP ban for range 66.249.*.*.

I have removed this ban and will check Google again over the next few days to see if this has had any effect.

Thanks for the heads-up guys.

[Digifiend]

Just saw what you meant. The good news is, it's not affecting all search engines. I just checked Bing, and the description was "Forum Topics Posts Last post ; General : Non-comics discussion. Discuss anything not related to comics here and if you are new to these boards, introduce yourself here."