Should I sell one homepage link to a casino site? Why not?

[James Trotta]

I am seriously considering selling a link from www.nfl-giants.com to a casino site

Now My site is a football one and the other is a casino site. I've heard all that stuff about not linking to casino sites, but I can't find any real evidence.

In fact when I did a search last night for informatoin some of the top results were spammed blog entries that linked to hundreds of gambling sites. For full details of my searches and what not:
http://www.buy-links.com/archives/001028.html

Plus this particualr site is on the top or near it for its keywords so Google doesn't seem to think this is a bad area.

But I wouldn't be writing this if I wasn't a little nervous. Does anyone have any solid eveidence that one homepage link ot a casino site is bad news?

[awall19]

you already link to a debt site and an nfl betting link.

I would steer clear of the casino and debt links, but you can do what you like. reasons behind my logic:
-if this thread was read by the wrong eyes at a time when they decided to care that could suck for you.
-the sportsbooking and ticket industries are flush with cash anyway. no need to sell to casino sites.
-selling to casino sites can make your site look less reputable to future potential advertisers

[James Trotta]

So you're saying that they don't care now, but if they do in the future I'd be penalized for having sold an off-topic link?

Actually the NFL betting link is why I consider this new casino site. Clearly NFL betting is related to my NFL team site so there should be no issue there... It seems like I'm already halfway there...

I like the idea of selling links to sports tickets sites instead, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

I had reservations about the debt link too, but I know Giants fans who have too much debt, so why should I let a search engine tell me it's irrelevant?

Originally Posted by awall19

you already link to a debt site and an nfl betting link.

I would steer clear of the casino and debt links, but you can do what you like. reasons behind my logic:
-if this thread was read by the wrong eyes at a time when they decided to care that could suck for you.
-the sportsbooking and ticket industries are flush with cash anyway. no need to sell to casino sites.
-selling to casino sites can make your site look less reputable to future potential advertisers

[dcristo]

Quote from the blog entry:

"I firmly brlieve you can get away with linking to unrelated sites, but casino sites may be considred adult or non-family friendly and may cause a linking site to be penalized where a link ot an unrelated family site would not be."

I agree with this statement. I feel it's ok to link out to non-related sites. Advertisers could be wanting to promote their sites on your site to capture the same audience, all be it that they may be in different industries. This is the same case with all advertising methods, not just text link ads, so it would be very harsh from Googles perspective to penalise sites for doing this.

[awall19]

Originally Posted by James Trotta

So you're saying that they don't care now, but if they do in the future I'd be penalized for having sold an off-topic link?

I am saying that they may care. and if it were connected to other sites of yours which got keyword rich links from blog comment sigs on blogs like mine I could be inclined to want to remove the links if I knew about it.

Originally Posted by James Trotta

Actually the NFL betting link is why I consider this new casino site. Clearly NFL betting is related to my NFL team site so there should be no issue there... It seems like I'm already halfway there...

it is half way there, but on topic.

Originally Posted by James Trotta

I like the idea of selling links to sports tickets sites instead, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

it takes time...but there is a ton of demand in the ticket market.

Originally Posted by James Trotta

I had reservations about the debt link too, but I know Giants fans who have too much debt, so why should I let a search engine tell me it's irrelevant?

fair enough. some Giants fans are probably crackheads too. may as well sell crack on the site, or no?

[Johan007]

Don’t make a quick buck, stick to related sites will pay off in the long run.

[RLRay]

Saying that you should stick to linking to reputable sites makes it sound like no gambling sites are reputable. There are many gambling sites which are perfectly reputable. DMOZ lists quite a few gambling sites in their directory. So does Yahoo.

I would say that the criteria to apply to linking to a gambling site would be whether or not it's going to be a useful resource to your visitors. Not whether or not it's a gambling or debt site.

[RLRay]

Also, if you're concerned about how reputable the site is, check to see if it's in DMOZ or Yahoo. Also do a backlink check on Yahoo, and look to see who the site is linking to.

[Papadoc]

Go to G and search for "online casino". There are results, but the only PPC ads are for travel to Las Vegas. That's an obvious policy decision as you can imagine the word casino would go quite large. I think you are risking something if you create the links, not only from an SE standpoint, but you may enter a category that you don't wish to be in with other content monitoring software as well.

I know several large corps who would sniff the page when it's called and if it sensed any connection to gambling, would blacklist your site. Do an analysis of your corporate networks that are hitting your site and see if it is reasonable to you to permanently lose part of that traffic for this text link.

But don't let anyone here disuade you. It's pretty unanimous, but if you think you should, it's your site. You asked for opinions but if they aren't what you want to hear then, go for it.

[jdonisthorpe]

I just ran into an example that I thought was interesting. native-american-dream-catcher . com is not in the top 100 in G for the key words "native american dreamcatcher" even though they have a pr5 and site is optimized, but they have some online casino text links at the bottom of their page. (also could be that G is only showing 3 backlinks, I guess)

[awall19]

Originally Posted by RLRay

Saying that you should stick to linking to reputable sites makes it sound like no gambling sites are reputable. There are many gambling sites which are perfectly reputable. DMOZ lists quite a few gambling sites in their directory. So does Yahoo.

right, but they are comprehensive directories. not Giants websites.

Originally Posted by RLRay

I would say that the criteria to apply to linking to a gambling site would be whether or not it's going to be a useful resource to your visitors. Not whether or not it's a gambling or debt site.

if its not on topic it probably is not going to be defined as useful. the nfl gaming one..sure ... regular casino ... nope

Originally Posted by RLRay

Also, if you're concerned about how reputable the site is, check to see if it's in DMOZ or Yahoo. Also do a backlink check on Yahoo, and look to see who the site is linking to.

DMOZ may be a bit sketchy in some of the adult or gaming categories. I would not use listings in those directories as the definitive guide for quality. Yahoo! even lists linkstoyou.com (the link farm) in their seo resources category.

Originally Posted by Papadoc

I think you are risking something if you create the links, not only from an SE standpoint, but you may enter a category that you don't wish to be in with other content monitoring software as well.

I know several large corps who would sniff the page when it's called and if it sensed any connection to gambling, would blacklist your site. Do an analysis of your corporate networks that are hitting your site and see if it is reasonable to you to permanently lose part of that traffic for this text link.

and also you may show up on lists you do not want to...such as blogs to spam (as read by bots), etc.

Originally Posted by Papadoc

But don't let anyone here disuade you. It's pretty unanimous, but if you think you should, it's your site. You asked for opinions but if they aren't what you want to hear then, go for it.

agreed. do what you want, we are just expressing our opinions.

[James Trotta]

I haven't quite decided yet, but I'm leaning toward doing it. Nearly all of my traffic comes directly; I get very little search engine traffic on that site. Plus if I did get banned, it seems that the ban wouldn't last forever if I removed the link. Anyway, thanks for the feedback.

[James Trotta]

Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad analogy?

Originally Posted by awall19

fair enough. some Giants fans are probably crackheads too. may as well sell crack on the site, or no?

[RLRay]

Originally Posted by James Trotta

Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad analogy?

It's certainly colorful and illustrative though.

[seonewbee]

Curious would this be a link on the page like regular links or would you place it in an Iframe to protect bots from finding it?

[awall19]

Originally Posted by James Trotta

Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad analogy?

it may have been a bad analogy, but it intentionally was a bad one...it was showing how thematic or logical the debt relief link placement is. if you have not spent much on advertising and/or do not care if the site gets pinged then go after it...

[James Trotta]

Just a regular old static HTML link.

Originally Posted by seonewbee

Curious would this be a link on the page like regular links or would you place it in an Iframe to protect bots from finding it?

Awall19 - I understand that casinos, crack, and football are three different themes. No anology necessary. What I'm asking is will Google punish me if what I think is OK for my visitors is different from what they think is OK for my visitors (if they even care what I give my visitors)?

The answer seems to be "maybe someday". Extra information is coming in about scaring off other advertisers, but at the moment there aren't any other advertisers (except that debt relief site)...

[awall19]

if we could predict the exact future actions of google in their entirety that is not information that we would give away free.

[Shawn]

I once asked someone who has a ton of ****** type links on his site why he did it. Mind you, at any given time, he has thousands people on his site. He responded with..

We simply see them as a sponsor like any other. For example race cars put all sorts of unrelated sponsors on their vehicles from ****** to Walmart, to Lowes. All I know is our traffic continues to increase and they are much less annoying than big flashy banners and popups all over the site annoying members.

My opinion is: Forget Google, forget Yahoo, forget all of them. Will your users think it's spammy or stupid to see a link to a certain type of site? I can call up MSN right now and buy an ad right on their front page.

But, here is another example. I could put casino links on Uncover the Net, and it would be helpful to some of the users. But it would be spammy to the other 99% of them. Do you see what I mean?

From Google itself..

Make pages for users, not for search engines. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

[Chill]

I thought this was a forum of knowledge, but when you use DMOZ as a guideline on casinorelated sites you are barking up the wrong tree. I know of hundreds of casinos, casinoportals and related content sites that ALWAYS get rejected. The reason is very simple, the editors of those categories run casinoportals and like to keep things as they are.
And it has nothing at all to do with the quality of the sites just to have said that aswell.

Edit:
I missed this comment that is bang on:
"DMOZ may be a bit sketchy in some of the adult or gaming categories."