Google has recently been chastised by the Russia government for displaying gambling ads to local residents. Gambling has been prohibited in Russia since 2009, and the local government may impose a penalty on the search engine provider if the issue is not rectified soon. The issue game to light this week, when it was discovered that a Russian Google user was able to see gambling advertisements in Google Ads.
They complained to the country’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), which has asked Google to remove the ads. If search provider does not do so in a timely manner, it will face a penalty from the government. The sites that were promoted in Google Ads were eight online casinos. The ads presented the possibility to covert Google searchers into players, possibly encouraging gambling activity.
Since gambling is illegal in Russia, the government does not want players being exposed to gambling ads and being encouraged to wager at online casinos. Blocks on Google Ads are not entirely fool proof, so prohibited content can sometimes sneak through. When bots submit ads, they can potentially circumvent AdWords filters.
In these situations, banned ads may be seen by searchers – but Google works hard to prevent this from happening. “Unfortunately, in some cases questionable advertisers attempt to find holes in our filters by various means and sometimes they succeed,” reads a statement from Google. “We are constantly improving our system and working on the reliability of our filters”. Gambling ads on Google are still quite new.
It was only in 2008 that the search engine permitted advertisers to promote online casinos using AdWords in certain countries. Google has not yet responded to the request from the FAS.
As this story develops, we will keep you updated.
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