Cake Poker Domain Issues

[Trikkur]

Hey everyone. We are back again with a new wave of DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA! Cake Poker is now sending out e-mails asking for domains with the terms Cake or Cake Poker in them. Shenaz also quoted this to me.

Affiliate is restricted from optimizing any page of their website(s) for keyword or keyword phrases that include, but are not limited to, Cake, Cake Poker, Cake.com, Cakepoker.com, and Cakepokernetwork.com in any format. This includes, but is not limited to, meta tags, headers and body content.

Affiliate is restricted from purchasing any domains that include "Cake", or bidding on any keywords or keyword phrases that include, but are not limited to, Cake, Cake Poker, Cakepoker.com, Cakepoker Network, Cakepokernetwork.com and Poker Room in any format in any pay per click (PPC) search engine. This includes, but is not limited to, the following search engines: Overture, Google, Kanoodle, FindWhat, ePilot and Ah-ha.

Affiliate is restricted from utilizing derivatives of Cakepoker.com and Cakepokernetwork.com in URLs and directory names for the intention of search engine optimization.

We would like you to transfer that domain to us.

Best regards,
Shenaz

A lot of poker rooms have these rules, but some of these are kinda crazy. We aren't allowed to use the words Cake or Cake Poker in the header, meta tags, and body content. HOW THE HELL CAN I PROMOTE THEM????

This conversation is not only just with me. I know at least 1 other person that this is happening to. I don't have the e-mail or chat where Cake Poker ALLOWED me to buy the domains with Cake in it, but I believe the other PAL member does have his conversation with Cake.

This is actually a brilliant move by Cake Poker lol. They allow affiliates to buy Cake Poker domains. Build them and gain page rank, etc. Then they go against their word to affiliates and want us to transfer the domains to them. They are just going to 301 redirect them and gain all the page rank and traffic that they let us build up.

Just for clarification, the website in question currently is CakeBonuses. Instead of transferring it to Cake, I think instead I might build a Anti-Cake poker site on there and just tell all my players to go to another room. I don't think I'll be breaking TOS anymore.

[gerrypolt]

Hi

If you build the anti-cake website. I will give you free links. I would love to see it. lol

good luck

[Ridge]

Well what is AMAZING here is that like other well known rooms, I'm guessing this is a selective issue, meaning there will be tons of others sites ignored while they come down on a few.

Also, I'm 100% sure someone has bitched, I get emails from AM's all the time saying "xxxx" sent this email complaining lol - Another case of someone spending too much time scanning the competition, and blaming others for their failures!

Hell, I got an email form a PAL member last year saying he was reporting me to cake, and he help "police" for them because he thinks its wrong. Then the same guys posts about gaming the system in other ways and justifies it.

It comes down to the nature of this business and this forum, we are all competitors and some sore loser want to punish others for success.

[MJ]

Considering they can't get Firefox to track for how many years now and just finally admitted it, I'd say their timing is a bit poor.

Smart for any brand to do this obviously, but considering they've let it go on for years and many many many many people have permission from an AM to have done it, they should make a reasonable offer to purchase.

Any brand that launches without buying the top 20 domains to go with their brand is rather silly in my opinion, it's a $200 annual expense to avoid the headache. Yes people will find other domains to use, but at least get your xxxbonus xxxrakeback domains lol.

More cheers to rooms like Carbon who do allow this though, they have embraced it as a benefit more than an expense it seems.

Good luck with your battle man, I do have PlayCakePoker.com if anyone wants to make an offer, as I surely am not shipping it to Cake for free.

[domepizzle]

I also got an email asking me to transfer my domains to Cake. These are sites that I sent an email and asked about before I developed them and was told everything was fine. I understand that it is always a risk building these types of sites. However Cake cannot allow certain affiliates to build these types of sites and certain affiliates not to. My only problem here is being told that this was okay from Cake for specific domains and now they are changing their mind. My plans right now do not include handing over the domains and will probably just send the traffic to a different room.

[Matt Geer]

I had just bought a cake poker domain minutes before trikkur made the post...

[xYassassinYx]

WTF - pretty much bullshit that you cant use cake poker in meta tags etc... how we meant to optimize our review pages?

and i also was told by a cake a.m that using the term cake is fine for domains..

im dropping them simple

[321]

Second and third paragraph are common sense that any sensible business would insist on.

Moronic first paragraph is saying "don't promote us", so........ don't.

Instead put the words "pokerstars" or "full tilt poker" in the "body content" of your pages.

[Trikkur]

Let's not forget this is not even weeks after it was leaked that Firefox doesn't track Cake poker affiliate sign ups. This is the reason that so many affiliates were reporting their players aren't being tracked.

Instead of just robbing affiliates that way, they might as well do this too amirite?

[corpfan1]

What a joke. Cake should be absolutely ASHAMED for this.

Hopefully you kept the emails that said you COULD use cake poker in the domain names...then you would have leverage for a nice settlement deal...