A company called Clickout Media is being called out for buying trusted news and niche sites, replacing them with AI-generated gambling content, and abandoning them after Google penalties. Some call this “parasite SEO,” but to me it sounds more like large-scale search spam.
What’s happening. The company acquired sports, gaming, and tech sites, then rapidly shifted them from editorial coverage to casino and crypto content, PressGazette reported.
- Sites were stripped of original reporting, filled with AI-written articles, and used to push offshore gambling links, according to former employees.
How it works. The strategy relies on buying domains with existing authority, then exploiting their ability to rank in Google. Content typically followed a pattern:
- Legitimate coverage continues briefly to preserve credibility
- Gambling content is introduced and scaled
- AI-generated articles and fake author profiles replace human writers
- Revenue comes from affiliate deals with casino operators, sometimes tied to player losses
The impact. Several previously active publications now appear deindexed, with layoffs and closures following. In some cases, even charity websites were repurposed to host gambling content.
What they’re saying. Google prohibits publishing content at scale for the primary purpose of manipulating rankings. It refers to extreme cases like this as “site reputation abuse,” a violation that can trigger manual actions and removal from Google’s index and search results.
- “While we aren’t able to comment on a specific site’s ranking on Search, our policies prohibit publishing content at scale for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings,” Google said about this case.
Why we care. This isn’t SEO in any meaningful sense. It’s reputation abuse designed to game rankings at scale.
The report. The SEO parasites buying, exploiting and ultimately killing online newsbrands by Rob Waugh at PressGazette.