June 8, 2023

Bodog loses domain name

In a story that’s surprisingly not showing up on any of the major news sites, online betting site Bodog.com has lost it’s domain name. I’d have linked to the site here, but there’s no site there to link to.

It seems that Bodog failed to show up in court to answer an infringement claim filed by 1st Technology. As a result, the judge gave a default judgment against Bodog for the amount of 48.6 million. Unable to seize any assets, 1st Technology took the Bodog.com domain name.

Bodog quickly moved their site to newbodog.com, however the loss of the domain name will be a major problem for their business. The fact that this story isn’t seeing major news means that many players will be left in the dark not knowing about the new website.

Even worse, is the affect on their traffic from the domain loss. Bodog enjoyed very favorable search engine results – including being #1 in Google for the term “betting.” Having lost control of the domain, they will be unable to do a 301 redirect to their new site or anything similiar. In the eyes of Google, Bodog went from being an authority site to being a brand new gambling related domain that has 0 inlinks – and lots of duplicate content.

Basically, they’re fucked.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

About Ryan Jones

Ryan Jones is an SEO from Detroit. By day he works as a manager of SEO & Analytics at SapientNitro where his team performs SEO for Fortune500 clients. By night he's either playing hockey or attempting to take over the world with his own websites - which he would have already succeeded in doing had it not been for those meddling kids and their dog. The views expressed here have not been paid for and belong only to Ryan, not any of his employers or clients. Follow Ryan on Twitter at: @RyanJones, add him on Google+ or visit his personal website: www.RyanMJones.com