Google has introduced new content guidelines that prohibit the placement of certain regulated items from the search engine’s rich results including all gambling-related products and services.
The update, which was added to the guidelines recently states:
Don’t mark up content that promotes widely prohibited or regulated goods, services, or information that may facilitate serious and/or immediate or long term harm to self or others. This includes content related to firearms & weapons, recreational drugs, tobacco & vaping products and gambling-related products.
According to Google, this new policy applies to all forms of rich results markup with immediate effect. This includes star ratings, prices, availability information and other SEO strategies they may attemept to cover.
Any affiliate marketers or gambling companies promoting gambling products or services using Google’s rich results must now remove the structured data markup from their product pages. Even if the markup is not removed, Google will no longer show rich results for any gambling related products or services, such as online betting sites and online casinos.
Google has also stated that it will not issue a manual of action for this new update and will simply remove the rich results from all search results.
Olivia has worked as an editor and writer for major brands across multiple niches. She now focuses on the iGaming and sports betting industries.