Thread: 888 Casino Certification Revoked by CAP - Press Release - Page 2

Cheers greek, im working on it now, I have a press release that goes with the petition so if we can all push this out to as many forums, blogs and pr sites as possible that would be great, the quicker we get the word around about it the better. I will post the article here first to give other members an opportunity to add and comment on what has been written already. Greek plaease feel free to pm me some technical stuff that you want me to include in the letter to google. Lets keep up the good work.

lol, good luck with the construction greek.

Originally Posted by bewise

Greek,
I agree that google would like us to handle this in our own way, which we are doing, with some degree of success. However if I was owner of a SE I would definately want to know about any sites that were attempting to spam pages in order to manipulate results. Unfortunately I dont have the same confidence as you that google is A) watching this or b) taking action. I believe that by handing google a petition protesting against the techniques mentioned in various posts on this forum, we are doing to things. 1) We are presenting ourselves as honest webmasters wholeheartedly against these spam activities. 2) We are trying to clean up our industry that has been tarnished by certain operators within it. Yes what we are doing at the moment is good and is working, but surely getting the Search engines on board to help our plight will not harm us. I will send the petition to google myself, I will detail all the evidence that we have gathered so far, inlcuding the statements made on this site, but does anyone have any suggestions as to how we can go about this. I was thinking name of webmaster and link to website that you operate, surely this would be enough? If I start a new thread and each member posts on it, simply name and url i can then send it off, perhaps it could be sticky? Any thoughts? moderators?

Sounds like a plan to me!!!

Hi guys, the petition is up and running, here is the press release that i have written to go with it, does anyone have any suggestions for adding or taking away before we start pushing this all over the web?

888 Accused of spamming to increase its exposure on the web

Sign the 888 petition here.

888 the operators of casino on net and pacific poker have been accused of stealing webmasters content in an attempt to increase their search engine positions. The practice known as “scraping” is a spam technique and is condemned by all the major search engines. Furthermore the majority of webmasters consider this practice as underhand and disrespectful to other website operators.

Casino affiliate programs, the leading resource for online gambling affiliate programs yesterday announced that it was revoking its certification of the 888 program stating “These illegal activities are negatively impacting thousands of affiliates and online marketers worldwide. There a number of programming teams operating with the approval of 888 Casino which are flooding search engines like Google and Yahoo with thousands of spurious search results. This angers searchers and makes finding legitimate destinations on the internet difficult if not impossible. These rogues are also robbing bandwidth and corrupting web logs with millions of commercial messages all linked to 888 Casino. This abuse of the system tarnishes the image of the industry as a whole and can not be allowed to continue.”

Casino affiliate programs have an active forum within its site with some of the most powerful promoters of online gambling participating in discussions there. The power that they yield together is demonstrated by the search engine results that they can achieve. A page that was set up less than a week ago at http://www.gamesandcasino.com/888/casino one moderator now occupies the top spot in google for the term “888 rogue casino”. Other search terms such as “rogue casino” and “blacklisted casinos” will also provide detailed information on the 888 saga.

Content theft is a serious problem for webmasters. It is essentially the same as somebody duplicating a book that someone else has written and then offering it for half price. The time it takes to scrape a site is minimal. “Content theft is on the rise from countries such as China and the developing world. I spend hours trying to come up with original content only for it to be replicated all over the web weeks later” says Mark Hirst of Bewisebets

Another issue is blog spamming. Blog spamming is where text is written that is of no use to its audience whatsoever. The text often has links inserted into it promoting the spammers site. Examples that have been recorded with regards to 888 are quotes such as

“One would, should he caught a look of terror in her online casino eyes, be a question of waiting for breakfast”

Night and day were 888 the same in this prison room, or daughter, for it was one of the gang. Free betting are you, with sudden glints of gold in it

The highlighted areas are links inserted randomly into blog comments in an attempt to increase the number of links pointing back to a site.

There is some dispute over who is behind this activity. Some say it is affiliates of 888, others claim that it is 888 themselves. Whichever is the case a company the size of the one in question should be taking action against any form of scraping, spamming or copyright theft. At the time of going to press Cassava holdings have declined to enter into a dialogue with Casino affiliate programs stating that they are not interested in a resolution at this time. Casino affiliate programs have requested that 888 introduce the following measures:

“To resolve this issue CAP has been in negotiations with 888 Casino for the last six weeks, but so far they have declined to comply and have stated they are not interested in a resolution at this time.

CAP had been seeking the following action items from 888 Casino on behalf of their affiliate members:

1. Issue a public statement indicating that 888 Casino does not condone nor will they reward content theft or illegal marketing practices by their affiliates or marketing consultants. If affiliates or marketers are discovered to be engaged in these practices their accounts will be closed, they will be banned from the 888 affiliate program and their proceeds or commissions due forfeited.

2. Addition to the Affiliate Program Terms and Conditions a provision stating the above policy.

3. A good faith effort by 888 Casino to adhere to these policies now and in the future.”

Clearly this kind of behaviour cannot be tolerated and it is in the interests of all webmasters to make a stand regardless of what industry you are in. If we send a clear message that any webmaster small or large is caught doing these things will be thoroughly hounded by the international web community, then we can stamp this kind of activity out for good.

You can sign a petition that will be sent to google, yahoo and all the other major search engines here. All you need to do is enter your name and website if you have one. The petition requests that 888 and its partner sites be removed from the search engine indexes until this issue is resolved. Please feel free to sign it even if you are not involved in the industry as theft is theft and together we can make a stand.

Sign the 888 petition here.

For further information on this topic please visit the following links

Casino affiliate programs

Casinomeister

Games and casino