Wikipedia Blackout

January 18th, 2012

How will the Wikipedia Blackout effect poker and poker sites in general? It’s a possibility that poker blogs, poker strategy, and sits that contain poker bios will receive an influx of traffic because of the Wikipedia Blackout. Poker fans will be Googling poker pros like they normally do but will not find the content on Wikipedia as they normally would. Wikipedia ranks one or page one for many poker bios and poker terms in general. When fans cannot get the info, they may go down to the next site, thus increasing the traffic. Google ranks Wikipedia high for many terms because of the links coming in and the fact that there are no ads. Google loves when sites don’t have advertising unless they are google ads of course.

The US government has in a sense already blacked out poker from the internet. On April 16th, the DOJ seized the domain names of several leading poker sites who do not even operate from the USA. They did this based on laws that were passed in the middle of the night and attached to a port security bill and that did not even apply to online poker.

I’m happy that Google and Wikipedia oppose the blackout, although I would like to ad that Google has acted just how these movie and record companies act. They limit the growth of the internet by punishing sites who use alternatives to Google. They have a monopoly on search of the internet (as every webmaster knows by looking at their stats).

To conclude I’d like to say that I applaud the efforts of Wikipedia and suggest a blackout of Google if they continue their monopolistic practices.