Gambling bad, but what about gambling TIPS?

is it against TOS?

[Tearabite]

A friend wants me to start an 'online poker tips' site for him..
No gambling, only tips on how to play (and presumably, win) playing online-poker.

would this be 'borderline', or 100% OK? (or not OK?) for Adsense?

[StuntasticAudi]

I own a website telling you how to create poker tables and google wouldnt let me put ads on it so i dont think they will let you. Email them and see.

On one of my sites i had a link to a poker gambling sites and they said to take it off.

[jomaxx]

You need to ask Google themselves as no-one else can answer for them. Nonetheless gambling-related content is explicitly prohibited and that's exactly what you are describing.

[Frank_Rizzo]

Absolutely no way will they allow it. Even if you had a site which denounced casino gambling google will still refuse your ads and just keep redirecting you to TOS.

Unfortunately you will see many of your competitors getting away with it. All they are doing is being careful with keywords so that they slip through the net. The blocking is automated so it's easy to do. It's quite shocking to see some ads with outrageous claims and which are clearly scams being displayed.

I tried complaining a few months ago. I asked Google why they would not let me advertise a gambling related site (which actually did not fall foul of their TOS to the letter, just by association!) whilst they were allowing my competitors to. All they said was to send in a TOS violation for the competitor ads which were being displayed.

Three months later the same ads are still being displayed....

There's an old saying "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em".

[barnest2]

I asked my Google rep if I could add a feature on a sports site that allowed users to bet on games against the spread using "virtual cash" that couldn't be cashed in for anything and had no true value except bragging rights. He said it was fine.

[jdancing]

I wonder why they have this rule. Google displays plenty of gambling adwords on their home page when searching on [ online poker tips ]

[edited by: jdancing at 11:11 pm (utc) on Feb. 13, 2006]

[Frank_Rizzo]

barnest2, that's not the response I got from Google UK & Ireland.

Any mention of gambling is banned from adwords and adsense.

[barnest2]

barnest2, that's not the response I got from Google UK & Ireland.

Any mention of gambling is banned from adwords and adsense.

Believe me, I was paranoid about adding this feature but the rep had no problem with it. There is no specific mention of "gambling" on the pages and it's not the main focus of the site. The feature that allows users to virtually bet on games against the spread is built into the forum software so maybe that makes a difference.

From a common sense stand point, it would be impossible to run a sports forum where users were prohibited from discussing who is favored in an upcoming game. Of course "We're favored by 3 points on Thursday" isn't going to set off any automated gambling alarms I imagine like "poker" might.