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Gambling Blogs Are Not Allowed In Blogger

Recently, we've had a few unsatisfied blog owners, with blogs deleted for TOS violation.

When able to research cached content, we see various posts with large, mysterious spreadsheets - and flashy ads with affiliate links.

When we look closer at the content, we see the spreadsheets appear to provide betting odds - and the ads link to various online betting services. The blogs in question are providing gambling services or bookmaking. Some blog owners prefer to call this "sports betting".

There are several problems with blogs which focus on gambling activity.
  • Gambling is illegal, in many areas of the world.
  • Even where legal, it is a regulated activity - and Blogger has forbidden it, as content in their hosted blogs.
  • Blogs which focus on gambling tend to provide odds, in large mysterious spreadsheets. The search engines may see this as empty / static content.
  • Blogs which focus on gambling tend to have links to other similar blogs, generally using referer links. This is called affiliate marketing.

Even if gambling is legal where a blog owner resides, Blogger blogs are viewed all over the world. Regulated activity, such as gambling, is not legal, in every world region.

Even if gambling is a legal activity in the region of the blog owner, it may not be so in that entire country. Even the well known Blogger feature of country code alias redirection is useless here. Gambling is a regionally accepted activity - and country code alias redirection is not active, for all countries of the world.

Blogger has forbidden blogs which focus on gambling, and other regulated activity.
Regulated Goods and Services: Do not use Blogger to sell or facilitate the sale of regulated goods and services, such as alcohol, gambling, pharmaceuticals and unapproved supplements, tobacco, fireworks, weapons, or health/medical devices.

Blogs with empty / static content have been a problem, for a while. We see blogs with no content / random low quality content, classified as spam hosts, frequently. The odds spreadsheets do not provide usable content, for search engine indexing.

Blogs with affiliate links have similarly been a problem. Affiliate marketing has been a classification category, for many years. Many ads - such as those with affiliate links, and / or pictures of enticing content - are not acceptable, in Blogger.

If you wish to provide or advertise gambling activity, in online content, please don't use Blogger blogs to host your content.

Comments

Noni said…
That's good to know. I wasn't aware that gambling blogs weren't allowed on blogger (not that I would, but I have seen them too.)

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