I was doing a few gambling related searches on Google today to see who had managed to get around Googles' ban on gambling sites and was very surprised with the results I saw. You see, for as long as I can remember people have always managed to find a way to get round the ban. They've offered newsletters, tips, sites where you can only play free games and so on. Also, a favourite is to only put ads up on a weekend or an evening, when the Google staff have gone home.
So imagine my surprise when I searched for "casino" and saw this:
Yep, not one sponsored ad. What about this search for "poker":
This l is the first time I've seen this on Google. Ever. It looks like the
latest tweak in June that was aimed at stopping ALL gambling ads is finally started to take hold.
But hang on, lets take a look at "bingo":
Looks like Google have clearly targeted "casino" and "poker" keywords first as "bingo" sponsored ads are still showing, and still clearly breaking Google's gambling-related content policy. But for how long? Not long at all I think. better get your ads up on Yahoo! and MSN quick guys!
What I'm listening to right now: Prince - "One Nite Alone...Live!"
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I am the founder of ShareMyPlaylists.com, ContentNow.co.uk and some other stuff. I have no idea why I'm blue on this photo though but I like it!
I’ve fallen foul of Google a couple of times with gambling ads and been told in no uncertain terms that if I do it again I’ll get banned from AdWords. So its particularly annoying to see certain people still getting away with it and still using the same tricks to do it.
Bizarrely searching now for “bet” and even “gambling” results in supposedly banned ads showing. You would think Google with their massed ranks of PhDs would figure a way to filter such obvious rule-breakers.
Google are bloody useless to be fair – the worse company I’ve ever dealt with online.
We launched a campaign for a bingo company – as part of this we looked at doing a google PPC campaign via the “free newsletter” aspect, we had heard about potentially changes coming on the 1st of June to tighten up the free gaming stuff, so we contacted our account manager, showed him the site, he put it past the regulation team, and then they said it was OK to run / build.
We launch the campaign on 1st June – get authorized on the bingo keywords and told it’s all OK.
Then we get kicked off.
So we speak to google again, told about the new regulations (which we already knew about) and were given another “way round” the system by the account manager / regulation team.
We did this – built the new site, and it was up for a few days, then it got kicked off again and we’re told we could not do that either.
So all in all a complete cock up by them that cost us a fair chunk of money in development time and made us look like idiots to our client.
As a side point, although the keyword “Bingo” is not cleared up, “online bingo” is.
Weird.
Anyhow, thought I would get that moan about them off my chest!
J
Although phrases like casino sites and casino games are still plastered. I wonder if google in the UK at least will ease off the banning with the new government approved gambling advertising laws.
I’ll mention a funny Americanism to you Kieron. In much of America, Bingo isn’t considered to be gambling. Especially in the bible belt. Having grown up in Texas where gambling was illegal, bingo for prizes thrived. Almost every church was associated with bingo in some way and gambling is still illegal in most states, but bingo isn’t.