• by Rob Garner , September 12, 2007

On Aug. 27 Bodog, a $7.3 billion-a-year online casino business, lost its primary domain Bodog.com as a result of a patent dispute. As the story goes, 1st Technology of Las Vegas was suing Bodog in a Washington state court for patent infringement, and Bodog apparently did not defend itself. The judge awarded $50 million in damages, and forced its U.S.-based domain registrar to turn over Bodog's famous domain to 1st Technology, making Bodog.com go black to its members, link traffic and search engines. Needless to say, a domain move for an online business of this size could be potentially ruinous, but Bodog CEO Calvin Ayre is not backing down.

Bodog responded by relocating on a new domain, NewBodog.com , and it seems to have succeeded in creating enough buzz around the new site address (at least, as much as possible in these odd circumstances). This wasn't so much a re-branding exercise (they're still Bodog) as it was about quickly spreading the word that the address had changed.

While the word is out with the players, search engines have been much slower to notice the change, and Bodog faces some unique challenges in this area. Its search situation is not unlike redesign efforts that many encounter, except that Bodog is painfully aware of the search equity hit it is taking -- while I still witness many Web designers and developers who are not aware of what is potentially lost in redesign, or moving sites to new domains.

No sooner was the domain yanked than the Google rankings for Bodog.com begin their descent. In my observation, NewBodog.com has just begun to reappear for high volume brand terms such as "bodog" or "bodog poker," though it will likely reclaim the greater share of these valuable brand terms at some point in the near future based on the new links and recent buzz generated. What is not so clear is if it will ever regain all of the generic rankings and traffic, even with a new site that contains an equal amount of content (approximately 90,000 pages). Because the major engines will not allow gambling and casino ads, Bodog is even more dependent on natural search, and does not have the uxury of a PPC net to reroute members to NewBodog.com.

I looked at a sample of mid-August Bodog rankings using SEODigger, and found that it was doing quite well in Google with the old domain, which was no surprise, considering its position in the online gaming industry. Here are a few historical Bodog rankings for casino terms that were revealed for Bodog.com:

· "poker game," Aug. 20, no. 1 ranking for Bodog.com.

· "casino sport book," Aug. 16, no. 1 ranking for Bodog.com.

· "college football gambling," Aug. 16, no. 1 ranking for Bodog.com.

On Sept. 10, neither Bodog.com or NewBodog.com was found in the Top 10 in Google for any of these phrases. While these terms represent only a limited sample, over 20,000 separate keyword rankings were reported, and it's safe to assume that there were many tens of thousands more. I'm not much of a gambler, but I have a few friends who are avid online players who tell me that Bodog.com also had high visibility for holy grail casino terms such as "online poker" and "online casino," among many others, and was one of the dominant players in the casino-related generic keyword space.

While Bodog does not have any control over the natural search fate of Bodog.com at this time, this story does offer a valuable example of the inherent value of natural traffic and search equity built into established domains (for a similar recent search equity story, see Kevin Delaney's recent Wall Street Journal article on Topix.net ). In an upcoming column I will discuss some of the factors to consider about a site's current value, and how to begin taking a much deeper view of your site's inherent natural search value when considering a redesign, rebrand or domain move.