Google lifts PartyPoker search ban

PartyPoker’s online visibility received a boost this week after Google appeared to lift a penalty which had been preventing the brand from appearing in Google’s search results.

The search engine handed down the penalty last month after PartyPoker was suspected to have violated the company’s linking guidelines through the purchasing of links aimed at increasing its online search rankings.

As a result, the bwin.party brand is thought to have missed out on significant traffic during the period as Google searches using poker-related terms such as ‘online poker’ failed to produce any links to the PartyPoker site.

The end of the penalty has seen PartyPoker’s presence partially restored with the brand now appearing on the first page for some searches. However, Tecmark search campaign manager and SEO expert Daniel Moorhead said it would be some time until PartyPoker listings returned to pre-penalty levels.

“Prior to the penalty, partypoker.com could regularly be seen in the top three for major traffic drivers, such as ‘poker’, but even after their link clean-up they’re still nowhere to be seen in the top 100 for that headline term,” Morehead explained.

“They’ll be thankful to regain a first page listing for ‘online poker’ but after previously holding the top spot, it’s still going to be a massive blow to traffic,” he added.

Although neither Google nor PartyPoker have commented specifically on the issue, a spokesperson for bwin.party last month said the company was “aware of the situation” and had been “working to resolve it”.

In recent years, Google has developed increasingly sophisticated software to detect the link building which PartyPoker was believed to have been penalised for, and has the ability to apply algorithmic penalties to websites in order to prevent such abuse.

The issue has provided an unwanted headache for PartyPoker, which has experienced limited growth since its re-launch in September last year.