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 Unlike
the sites listed above it in the right menu, Pokerlistings.com is post-poker boom domain. Or more accurately, it is a
right-on-the-money domain. It was established March 2003, at the start of the World Poker Tour and just before the explosive
phenomenon known as Chris Moneymaker. It remains the principal success story from the generation of websites put online around
then.
In its earliest days, Poker Listings was more than a little odd. The site itself was almost nothing but offsite links.
As Gertrude Stein would say, there was "no there there". It was immediately successful at a tactic that there was no
rational reason for it even to exist: buying Adwords on Google and Overture listings on Yahoo for the name of the various
cardrooms. Why PokerStars or Party Poker would allow an affiliate to buy a paid ad above their organic result for their own name
is puzzling, and then pay them for doing it to boot! An enormously high percentage of players they sent to cardrooms would have
went there for free if Poker Listings were not allowed to bid to be above the cardrooms themselves. (I'm not talking about them
bidding for terms like "poker bonus", only bidding for terms like "PokerStars" or "Party Poker".)
Since that generous gift from the cardrooms, Pokerlistings.com has expanded broadly, in terms of staff, site localization,
search presence and mega-aggressive attitude about SEO -- if there is a website vaguely on the topic out there that hasn't
been approached to sell links to to Poker Listings, it's probably because the domain has only been up five minutes!
Poker Listing's original scorched earth philosophy (let's make every nickel we can today because there may be no
tomorrow) has given way to a mostly more mature attitude, with the company establishing an deep content website
rather than just link lists -- and by purchasing other complimentary websites, like Pokerjunkie.com and Learn-texas-holdem.com.
The maturity exception, which must be hurting their bottom line badly, is no poker portal site acts with a greater sense of entitlement.
Poker Listings poutingly removed ads for several cardrooms when they lowered what they would pay per player after the passage of the
UIGEA, despite the plainly
obvious factor that all players lost value after that if only because there will be less liquidity... poker players
need other players to play against.
Poker Listings traffic has shrunk a bit as poker has cooled off from its white-hot popularity, as well as the effects of a
Google 950 penalty circa January 2007. In terms of search though, it remains the most aggressive kid on the block, by far. |
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