Offshore gambling sites have had to get creative – whether through targeting customers or dodging strict payment restrictions. Now, according to Backlinking.com, an independent research publication, offshore sites are also snatching expired government domains.
Offshore Gambling Websites Tap Used Up Legitimate Domains to Gain Prominence
These domains carry weight and authority in the eyes of search engines, which means that their content is often prioritized while the search engines catch up that the content itself may not be up to scratch any longer.
At least 448 websites have been sold between January 2024 and May 2026 that have become gambling websites this way, Backlinking.com claims.
For example, Queen’s Green Canopy, a tree-planting initiative launched for her 2022 Platinum Jubilee, is now landing people on an online slots page in Indonesia. Every Woman Every Child’s website, a United Nations global health movement, has also fallen prey to a similar fate, leading to an Indonesian-themed online casino.
The former website over Brexit, “Vote Leave,” which saw far-right parties push for the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, has also been hijacked in the vilest way possible – it is now offering gambling to people who have self-excluded from regulated websites in the UK, targeting keywords such as “websites not on GamStop,” the nation’s self-exclusion list.
According to Backlinking.com, the websites have paid a pretty penny to acquire what are seen as valuable targets. For example, the research firm’s own work suggests that the owners of the 448 domains analyzed received $22.3 million from various gambling websites and affiliates. In other words, a website has gone up for as much as $50,000, a negligible sum to sell for.
Spending Millions to Buy Hundreds
According to Backlinking.com, the domains that sold over $5,000 were the most likely to become a gambling website – out of a sample of 3,692 websites, one in ten of those that sold over the threshold transformed into a gambling domain.
This report is crucial as it would help further consolidate efforts by regulators who would be able to target specific wrongdoers. The Vote Leave website is particularly jarring and quite testy, but even less prominent domains are leveraging website metrics as interpreted by search engines in order to drive sales and convert paying customers.
These insidious practices are often associated with poor consumer safety and protection measures, which could lead to even greater problems for the people who engage.