Google Working with Poker Affiliates

January 15, 2009

Google has announced that they are changing the way that they run AdWords. They recently said that they are changing their policy on gambling and online casinos and how they are run through the site. They are going to allow affiliates of popular online poker sites to bid on the most popular industry terms such as “online poker.”

For now only those in the United Kingdom will be allowed to bid as online poker playing is not yet recognized as a legal activity in the United States. AdWords is a marketing agent for the online gambling and poker industry and has now started advising affiliates how they might be able to bid on those popular words. The poker and gambling sites themselves have already been able to pursue pay per click advertising as the search engine has been allowing that since last November.

With affiliates now being able to bid on those poker terms the price of the search terms is undoubtedly going to go up. Some of the biggest poker sites out there are all traded on the London Stock Exchange, and they are the ones vying for the search terms. None of them cater to the US market because of recent law changes.

For Google it is a smart move because they want to keep the poker affiliates happy. They want them to be successful because they are huge spenders and “represent a good market for Google.” Now affiliates will not be able to bid on the poker sites that they promote, like “PartyPoker” but operators can bid on their competition’s names.