Others : Will Search Engines Ban Gambling Advertisers?

Two of the world’s biggest search engines have recently considered banning online gambling for good. They haven’t justified their decision but off the record it is said that it is a response to the private and governmental pressure.

Google and Yahoo! declared that the ban process is already in effect but it seems to be advancing in baby steps. It’s been several months since the two companies announced they plan to ban online gambling ads for good.

This speculation states the act is due to the U.S. Department of Justice's intervention along with the media. Both giants refused to comment their decision and threatened to retrieve the specific keywords from their lists. The ban doesn’t seem to be so effective as you can still find casinos as search results for words such as “online gambling” and so on.

The search also revealed links to portals that guide web visitors to online casinos. They blamed the search filters for this. Google has ads that pass through the automatic filter. The content is then checked by human filters but this takes time and in the period between the two filter inspections, online casinos benefit from internet exposure.

Brad Fallon, CEO of interactive marketing consultancy Smart Marketing Inc. states that Google doesn't like having things done manually while Peter Horan, CEO of About.com declares that people are becoming cleverer when it comes to cheating filters despite Google’s efforts to implement the policy. About.com doesn't have any ban on online gambling advertisements.

Marc Lesnick, organizer for the Casino Affiliate Convention thinks that this decision will affect the affiliate sites that direct users to casinos more than the casinos themselves. He believes that many sites are turning to search engine optimization to increase their ranks in Google's search results.