I have been in business for a very long time, and I may have some oldfashioned principles.
One of the very basic ones is that one needs to be able to count on people doing what they say they will do. A handshake needs to be a handshake, a promise a promise and a contract a contract.
I have an appointment on Monday and I am keeping it. Obviosly this thread is being read (maybe not on the weekend) and Nic knows people want him to show up here. So it wll be a topic on Monday.
The only thing I am interested in, is to clean up google and the other engines. For several reasons:
Theft is theft and our websites are the result of hard work. No one should be allowed to steal from us. For a company that wants to “partner” with us to pay others to steal from us is unethical and hurts us.
To google, we have become a ripe pimple on it’s nose. If I was google, I’d pop it and be done with it. The gambling industry is a pain in the axx to the engines. That is very, very bad for us. Last not least, this industry already has problems with its reputation. We certainly don’t need to aggravate this with sleezy promotional methods.
888 is not the only program doing this, they were just the most blatant. A lot of this crap has now disappeared. A lot is still there.
All the programs doing this (and they are big as life on our radar screen) need to pay attention to their statistics, namely the referring URLs. When they see an affiliate having hundreds of them, take a look and see if they are legit or if they are scrapers.
Asking affiliates to turn these in and removing them one at a time is plain silly and a fruitless exercise. There are hundreds of thousands out there. Getting one deleted is totally ridiculous. The programs are in a perfect position to locate all of the ones that are paid by them and eliminate the pay. Once the pay stops, the nuisance will stop too.
The reason I put up the 888 blacklist page is not because I have a beef with 888. To me, 888 is just a set of numbers, not an emotionally charged name. It is because I want to clean up the searches, I strongly believe our industry depends on it. Our survival as well as our reputation are threatened by this criminal conduct. 888 is not alone in this, and after we get some visible, proactive cleanup initiated by 888 we will look to the others to follow suit.
Obviously 888 is hesitant to post here because no one wants to walk into a flame. I am risking being flamed here too. I don’t like it one bit.
But since we are a professional board and not a free for all, I think we can all agree to have a civilized, polite exchange with 888 here in order to facilitate the proper cleanup of this mess.
If I didn’t believe that we can get this cleaned up in a businesslike manner, I would pull the 888 page and go on my merry way. I am donating a good amount of my time and energy to getting this resolved. I have better things to do.
So, hopefully we will see 888 here next week and cooler heads prevail.
And no, I don’t represent CAP. I don’t have any ties with CAP other than that I volunteer as a moderator, I have been posting here pretty much since its inception. Years. Beause of that I am often associated with CAP, but really, I am only a guest here and I am always acting completely on my own accord.
That said, I think one of the bigger mistakes 888 made is to cease communications with CAP. There are other programs who have been in hot water over the years, Fortune and Referback come to mind, and they have faced the music, cleaned up their act and are now respected members of this community.
888 can do this too. But not by hiding out and being unresponsive.