Online gambling advert ban extended to include free-to-play sites
Thursday 7th June 2007
Despite the legality of gambling advertising in Great Britain, Google UK has joined Yahoo! and widened its ban on gambling and online poker-related advertising to include free-play and even educational poker sites. The MSN network has not yet banned any online poker or gaming sites.
A company statement explained, 'Google has always prohibited the advertising of things like bingo, poker and online casinos. However, having looked at this issue very carefully and considered the views of our users, we have decided to extend our policy and will no longer take ads for sites that promote gambling related content or gambling tutorials or whose primary purpose is 'playing for fun', gambling or casino games of skill.'
The puritanical stance on online poker does not extend to Google’s standard search results, and listing and pay per click advertisers will still be able to buy search engine traffic. Google UK has said that the action will be taken on this immediately, but a search for ‘online poker’ this morning resulted in 37,000,000 hits, many of which were for free-play sites, and sponsored links were also returned.
Despite the legality of gambling advertising in Great Britain, Google UK has joined Yahoo! and widened its ban on gambling and online poker-related advertising to include free-play and even educational poker sites. The MSN network has not yet banned any online poker or gaming sites.