October 20, 2009 (CAP Newswire) — Suddenly and without any real explanation, Google has removed the alleged search engine "penalty" for online casino domain name Gambling.com. That penalty was estimated to have cost the owner about £1million a year in profit.
When the company original applied the penalty to the domain name back in 2007, the owner, Media Corp, saw it plummet from the top spot in the search engines to down around 100.
For its part, Media Corp claims it has never fully understood why Google imposed the penalty abruptly back in ’07. The action came just two years after the company originally bought the domain and site for £11m, and after its first year in operation netted an announced a £2.7m post-tax profit.
Now, Media Corp plans to quickly relaunch the Gambling.com site, reports EGR Magazine. The company has just signed a deal with SEO firm On-e Media for a joint re-launch of a site under the Gambling.com domain. Presumably, On-e Media will be able to leverage the already-golden domain name — practically an automatic scorer on search engines — into even greater profits. The new site will offer sports betting, poker, casino and financial betting, EGR reports, and is scheduled to launch next month.
So why did Google lift the penalty, and why did it impose it in the first place? Is this a sign that the search engine giant, which often acts as a bellwether for the entire Internet industry, is further softening its stance on the online gaming industry?
To read the original report at the UK Independent, click here. EGR Magazine’s report can be found here.