Google relaxes ban on gambling advertising

Adverts for gambling services will be introduced to Google's UK website from tomorrow.

Though the globally ubiquitous search engine banned adverts for gambling in 2007, improvements in the regulation of the advertising system (and, some suggest, the impact of the economic downturn on Google's share price) have prompted the company to make a u-turn on the embargo.

UK companies wishing to advertise gambling services must be registered with the Gambling Comission, and the new, tighter regulations will include the omission of gambling adverts from all searches where the "safe search" option is selected. The adverts are to be classified by Google as "non-family safe".

While the ban on gambling advertising was in force, advertisers managed to circumvent regulations by buying advertising space on misspellings of popular gambling-related terms.

With Google's share price having fallen to around $314 from a 52-week high of $747, the company has made a number of announcements in recent days which suggest greater attempts to monetise many services previously offered free of advertising. The popular Google Maps service has begun to display adverts below its maps, and a number of measures to generate revenue from the Google-owned video-sharing website YouTube have been announced in recent weeks.