Has the Credit Crunch Affected Google’s PPC Gambling Policy?

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November 5th, 2008 by

I wrote an article a couple of weeks ago discussing whether or not Internet and Search Marketing and in particular PPC where to be considered recession proof.

I argued that based on a number of reports the PPC industry was relatively unaffected by the recent economic downturn and that search volumes were still advertising spend in this medium wasn’t falling like in other more traditional forms of media.

A recent change by Google may argue the opposite however.

After years of not allowing advertisers to run PPC based keywords on Google Adwords they have changed their policy and from Friday gambling businesses is registered with the Gambling Commission and providing a valid operating licence number will be allowed to run terms such as ‘free casino gambling’ ‘online casinos’ and ‘play poker online’ as PPC keywords on Goolge.

Why have the search engine giant suddenly changed their minds about a policy that has long been established? Could it be that the searches have fallen and Googles potential revenues could take a hit?

With likely search volumes of between 1-3 million for such terms as ‘casino’ and ‘poker’ and the online gambling industry in the UK being so competitive the cynic in me thinks that Google have introduced this change in policy to make any millions they may have been losing out on from their existing revenue streams.

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