Your domain just got blocked — here's what to do
Finding out your domain is blocked is genuinely stressful, and the decisions you make in the first couple of hours set the tone for the rest of the week. This is a practical playbook — from the moment you find out, through mitigation and regulator contact, to how you avoid going through this again. Written for people who have actually been on this side of the phone call.
First 30 minutes
Don't skip any of this, and don't overthink it. The goal is confirmation, damage control, and paper trail — in that order.
- 1. Confirm it's real. Check from multiple ISPs in the affected country. A single failing check can be a blip; a consistent failure across carriers is a real block. Use whatever monitoring you have, or ask a couple of people on the ground.
- 2. Turn off the money tap. Pause every paid campaign that points at the blocked market. This is the single highest-ROI action in the whole response — every minute you wait here is pure waste.
- 3. Tell the team. Ops, marketing, dev, partners. If you have affiliates, tell them yesterday — they're losing money at the same rate you are.
- 4. Document everything. Screenshots of the block page (if there is one), timestamps, which ISPs you checked, the exact error. This is going to matter for regulator appeals later, and you will not remember it in a week.
- 5. Check the rest of your domains. Blocks often arrive in groups. One domain blocked in Italy usually means three are, you just didn't notice.
Figure out what you're dealing with
"My domain is blocked" covers about five distinct situations, and the response depends on which one you're in. Four questions to answer before deciding anything:
How wide is it?
One country, or several? All ISPs in that country, or just one? A single ISP usually means a local misconfiguration. Everyone together means a regulator action.
How are they blocking?
DNS poisoning means you'll see redirects to warning pages. IP blocking means timeouts. DPI/SNI means TLS resets. The technique changes what mitigations are even available.
Is it official or an error?
Check the regulator's published list if they have one. If you're not on it, you're dealing with an ISP error — which is usually faster to fix, and the approach is completely different.
How much does it cost you per hour?
If this is a primary market, you're paying for mitigation; if it's a secondary one, you might just pause and wait. Be honest about the number — it decides your budget for the next steps.
Technical mitigation, in rough order of speed
While the regulator or ISP process grinds along, you can usually get users back online. Which option works depends entirely on the blocking method — don't waste time on a CDN swap if the issue is SNI filtering.
- Roll out a backup domain: If you've got a pre-registered alt domain, this is the fastest recovery path. Update your links, redirect from the main domain where possible, and you're back in hours instead of days. The lesson here is: always have one or two of these warmed up before you need them.
- CDN in front of the origin: If the block is purely IP-based, sticking Cloudflare or Fastly in front can help — the user hits the CDN's IP, not yours. Does nothing for DNS-level blocks or SNI filtering, though.
- Change IPs: IP-only block? New IP address, updated A records, wait a TTL cycle. Short-term fix — regulators who are paying attention will follow the move.
- GEO routing: Serve different destinations based on country and current block state. Blocked market gets the mirror; everywhere else keeps the main.
- Tell your users: Email list, in-app notifications, social. Users who want to reach you will follow instructions. Don't assume they'll find the backup domain on their own — they won't.
One warning: technical mitigation is a bandage. If a regulator is actively blocking you, they'll usually find the mirror too — sometimes within days. Long-term, the problem needs to be fixed at the source, through compliance, an appeal, or a license conversation.
Talking to regulators and ISPs
If the block is an error, or you have a defensible position (valid license, mistaken identity, overbroad wildcard), this is the path to a permanent fix. It's not fast, but it's often the only thing that actually resolves the issue.
- 1. Identify who ordered the block. Usually the block page says. If not, it's almost always the country's gambling / telecoms / content regulator for your vertical.
- 2. Get your documents together. License, proof of compliance, correspondence with the regulator, anything that supports your case. Do this before you contact anyone.
- 3. File through the official channel. Every regulator has one — sometimes an online form, sometimes a lawyer-only filing. Doing this through unofficial channels usually means starting over.
- 4. Talk to the ISP directly when it looks like their mistake. Abuse or compliance contacts at the ISP can sometimes fix overbroad wildcards or stale entries faster than the regulator can.
- 5. Bring in local counsel for anything serious. Especially in the EU and CIS markets — a lawyer who has done this before knows the timeline, the forms, and the informal bits that move things along.
Timing varies wildly. ISP errors can be fixed same day. EU regulator appeals typically take days or weeks. Some jurisdictions need a court order and that can stretch to months. Set expectations accordingly.
Make sure it doesn't happen again
After the fire is out, the job is to make the next one smaller. Four things that help:
Continuous monitoring
The one thing that turns "we're bleeding money and didn't know" into "we caught it in minutes". Non-negotiable if you operate in multiple markets.
Pre-registered backup domains
Keep a stash. Don't scramble to register one in the middle of the incident — they take time to warm up, and you want the DNS already configured.
Proper licensing where it matters
In regulated verticals this is the only real long-term answer. Licensed operators don't tend to end up on blocklists at all.
A written runbook
Write this playbook down for your team before you need it. Who pauses ads. Who files the appeal. Who posts the status update. During an incident is not the time to design a process.
Monitoring is the cheap part
Every step above is easier when you already know about the block within minutes of it starting. domainreach.io gives you that early warning — checks run from real ISP connections in 50+ countries, Telegram or email alerts go out as soon as a block is detected, and the history is there when you need it for a regulator appeal. It turns "business emergency" into "ticket on the ops queue", which is honestly the goal.