• by Kate Kaye , May 4, 2004

Despite Google's ban on accepting online gambling ads, Web wagering outfits are evading the search king's sentries. In recent days, searches on Google for terms including "online gambling"--and, just in time for last weekend's Kentucky Derby, "horse racing"--resulted in Google AdWords ads for online gambling sites. Google last month said it would ban online gambling ads. Unauthorized sponsored links to gambling sites are also showing up on About.com through its partnership with Google.

Google and Yahoo! on April 2 announced decisions to eliminate online gambling ads. Industry insiders point to legal threats from the U.S. Department of Justice to other media companies as the impetus for the search firms' new restrictions. Both companies declined to comment on whether they have received specific legal notices regarding the issue.

A Google search on May 2 for keyword terms "sports betting," "sportsbook," "Kentucky Derby bet," and "horse racing" yielded AdWords text ads for Internet betting sites such as KingPin Sportsbook, BetUS.com, SportsBetting.com, TVGNetwork.com, and RaceBook.com. Another Google search that day for "online gambling" prompted ads for Sands of the Caribbean Online Casino and No Deposit Casino.net. Searches for the same five terms on Yahoo! resulted in no sponsored listings or ads for online gambling operations. Both Google and Yahoo! claimed that Internet gambling ads would be removed from their search results by the end of April.

The MediaDailyNews questioned Google about the ads on May 3, and since then, some have been removed from the system. However, while a subsequent search for "online gambling" on May 5 indicated a removal of the ads viewed two days prior, it prompted new ads for GoldenPalace.com and Aspinalls Online Casino. Google automatically posts ads that pass its automated filters, and eventually subjects those ads to human inspection. Changes to the search firm's system affect result listings on its site, as well as links and ads it serves to partner sites. Google declined to speak on the record for this story.

"It appears that Google doesn't like to do anything manually; they want to have it be automated," suggests Brad Fallon, CEO of interactive marketing consultancy Smart Marketing Inc. He believes that "people are just reposting their ads ... They're making hay while the sun shines." Fallon adds that as a result of Google's Web wagering decision, some advertisers that sell things that appeal to a wide audience--such as Web hosting services--are taking advantage of depreciated bid prices by purchasing Web gambling-related keywords to advertise their unrelated offerings.

Google provides sponsored links and/or text ads to partner Web sites including iVillage, Ask Jeeves, and About.com. As viewed by the MediaDailyNews between April 28 and May 2, About.com content areas including Casino Gambling, Sports Gambling, Florida for Visitors, and Horse Racing featured sponsored links provided by Google for Bodog Sportsbook, Cobra Gold Casino, PartyPoker.com, KrunchTimePicks.com, GoldenPalace.com, and MyHorseRacing.com. Google is About.com's exclusive partner provider of sponsored links.

"Google does their best to implement the [Internet gambling] policy, but people have become clever at beating the filters," explains Peter Horan, CEO of About.com. Horan notes that About.com can block specific URLs from sponsored links that appear on the site, but admits that advertisers can easily sneak under the radar by using a different Web domain. About.com has no outright ban on online gambling advertisements, according to Horan.

In fact, a banner ad for Casino on Net pulsated along the top of pages in About.com's Casino Gambling section on April 28, May 2, and May 4. "They sneak it in; they're always doing that," contends About.com's Senior Vice President, Sales, Mark Westlake, who says that the Casino on Net ad was sold through one of the third parties About.com employs to sell its remnant inventory.

Marc Lesnick, conference organizer for the Casino Affiliate Convention (CAC), was sure to ask casino owners who attended the CAC last month in Amsterdam just what they thought about the recent Web gambling ad moves. According to Lesnick, many claimed that the restrictions would hurt affiliate sites that drive traffic to online casinos more than the gambling companies themselves. And, while he's heard of casino advertisers reposting ads to evade Google's censors, he says that many are focusing on search engine optimization to boost their rankings in Google's natural results listings.

"What I'm hearing," adds Lesnick, "is no one's giving away any secrets as to what's working and what's not. "