Published by Waqas Nasir
You pay for a link. It goes live. Three months later it's gone. In every niche this happens sometimes, but gambling sites feel it more. The sites that carry casino and betting content are under more pressure from regulators, search engines and their own advertisers than most publishers.
This guide explains why gambling links disappear, what research says about link loss in general, and how to plan so one lost link doesn't hurt your campaign. We don't quote a "normal" loss rate, because nobody publishes a reliable one.
Links die everywhere, not only in gambling. The Pew Research Center looked at about 1 million web pages collected by Common Crawl between 2013 and 2023, and checked in October 2023 whether they still worked. It found that 38% of the pages that existed in 2013 were no longer available. It also found that 23% of news web pages contain at least one broken link.
So a link that works today isn't guaranteed to work in a year, whatever the niche. Gambling adds a few reasons of its own.
Google's spam policies include a rule on "site reputation abuse". It applies when third-party content is published on a host site mainly because of that host's already-established ranking signals, which it has earned mainly from its own content. One of Google's own examples is a medical site hosting low-quality third-party casino content that isn't integrated into the rest of the site.
The policy says Google looks at how much editorial oversight the host gives to the third-party content. Google lists things that are not violations, such as opinion pieces with clear authorship, and third-party content with clear authorship, editorial responsibility and consistent branding. It also says that affiliate links are fine when they carry the right rel attributes.
What this means for you: a publisher who allowed casino posts on an unrelated site may remove them, or move them, to avoid trouble. That's one reason to prefer publishers whose gambling content fits their topic and has real authors. Our guide to what to check on a gambling publisher explains how to judge this.
Gambling advertising rules differ by country and change over time. In the UK, for example, the Gambling Commission's licence conditions make licensed operators responsible for the actions of third parties they contract with. They require the operator to be able to end a contract with an affiliate that breaches a relevant advertising code of practice.
When a rule changes, or when a partner is found to be out of line, content can be taken down quickly. This is our reading of how these rules work in practice, not a statement from a regulator: a placement that was acceptable last year may not be acceptable this year.
Following the rules of your market is always your responsibility, and we can't give legal advice.
The cause is often dull. A publisher redesigns the site and deletes old posts. Someone edits the article and cuts the link. A site is sold and the new owner clears out the old content. A domain isn't renewed. These things happen to every kind of site, as the Pew data shows.
Google says sites that violate its spam policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Google detects violations through automated systems and, as needed, human review, which can result in a manual action. A link from a site that is demoted or removed is worth much less to you, even if it technically stays on the page. In our view, a site that sells links on a large scale or links out to dozens of casino brands is at higher risk, which is why we look at how many gambling sites a publisher already links to.
Some placements are sold for a fixed period, or only for as long as the advertiser keeps paying. We can't tell you how common that is, because no one publishes the figure. So always ask, and get the answer in writing before you pay.
You can't prevent every loss, but you can make a loss cheap.
Some placements involve payment. Google's spam policies say that links bought to influence ranking should be marked with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow", and our guide to link rel attributes explains how. Whether a publisher shows a visible label depends on the publisher and the country. If a placement will carry a label, we tell you before you approve the site, and you decide whether to go ahead.
Our iGaming link building service places links for gambling brands in the markets where promotion is legal. You choose the sites from a shortlist and approve the content before it's published. For a broader guide to the niche, read our article on casino link building.
This is general information about link building, not legal, financial or medical advice.
Checked on 1 October 2026.
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