Google Affiliate Network remains closed to online betting

Google’s new affiliate network, recently launched in the UK, has excluded the market of online betting and gambling from its ranks. Google links up with companies partnering affiliate websites, which pay out when links are clicked through and converted into paying customers. Affiliate networking is a huge industry on the internet, but Google, since taking over DoubleClick in 2007, have seen online gambling as one of the legally grey areas. There was a ban in place from Betting companies using pay-per-click advertising through Google, but that was lifted back in 2008, when European gambling companies were allowed to target customers in England, Wales and Scotland only. But while that is in place, Google have maintained their stance on keeping up their ban on sites linking to online gambling through the Google Affiliate Network.

But there is still money to made from the online gambling industry from Google of course, because they still allow companies to bid for the hot keywords in their Adwords service. So Google are bringing their massively influential Affiliate Network to the UK, but the ban on gambling affiliates remains because of the intricacies of local laws. Affiliate ads apparently are unable to be used by Google, where regional laws (such as with online betting companies) prevent the use of their services anywhere else in the world. There is still hope that there can be a future workaround in the legal technicalities of all this, because with the power that the Google Affiliate Network has, there would be extra big profits to come from the gambling companies.