Online casino, sports book, and online poker company Bodog.com has been doused with some legal hot water and forced to relaunch their site on a new domain NewBodog. It appears that what happened was Bodog was being sued for a patent infringement claim. When Bodog's counsel failed to appear in court, a summary judgment was issued and one of the terms was for seizure of all of the Bodog.com owned domains, all 3000 of them.
From an SEO perspective, this is a sites worst nightmare. Bodog.com has maintained solid rankings in top terms in the poker industry to include poker and online poker. Newbodog.com will essentially be starting from scratch in one of the most competitive SEO areas, losing literally years of work.
Though Bodog and Calvin Ayre the founder are claiming: "We are working to resolve any remaining issues on the temporary site as soon as possible, and fully expect to have our original sire back up shortly.", it seems like there are no quick fixes in this situation.
These guys will have updates and information on Bodog and NewBodog and a page about NewBodog as well.
Yesterday NewBodog.com and Bodog hit Google Trends, with Bodog coming in at #33 and showing at #50 for today.
The case was in the State of Washington, King County Superior Court, Case #07-9-21969-8 dated 8/1/07.
3 comments:
Nice post GS.
A crazy case really, I was reading about it on 4Flush I really think Bodog just didn't realize they owned anything the United States could touch.
They found the patenting of all online gambling laughable, and the fact that the US thought they could do something about it even more laughable.
In the end, they lost the most valuable asset they had.
affiliate, I think you're right. It will be really interesting to see what happens over the next month or so. Bodog's spin has been great so far and I certainly have the utmost respect for their SEO, but it must be painful for them to watch their SERPs drop off. I expect the true impact to Bodog will take months to shake out as new customers are slowly siphoned off a a result of virtually no listings in the search results.
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