Several publications linked to Clickout Media have reportedly received Google manual penalties, with journalists losing jobs at Gambling Insider and Esports Insider. An October 26, 2026, Press Gazette investigation named those two outlets alongside Gaming America, PlaySense, and CasinoBeats as sites believed to have been affected.
Ahrefs charts covering November 3, 2025, through November 2, 2026, show substantial losses in estimated organic search traffic across the five sites. Gaming America recovered strongly during September and October before another sharp fall near the end of the period.
Gambling Insider staff told Press Gazette that newsroom cuts followed a Google penalty in September. At Esports Insider, employees described writers disappearing from company Slack channels, while former writer Ben Touati said casino articles had again appeared under his name after he lost access to the site.
Esports Insider’s estimated search traffic fell sharply during March 2026, recovered through May and June, then dropped again from July. A smaller late-summer recovery faded, leaving the November estimate well below its level a year earlier.
The site had faced search problems before the latest report. Touati previously said managers cited Esports Insider’s removal from Google search when explaining reduced work before his contract ended in March.
Clickout Media denied owning Esports Insider in its response to Press Gazette. Employees told the publication that Clickout Media ran the site, and the investigation cited online links between the outlet, Clickout Media, and Finixio.
Gambling Insider’s chart shows strong growth during the first half of 2026, followed by elevated traffic through much of the summer. A steep decline began around late August and continued through September and October.
Clickout Media’s acquisition of GamblingInsider.com for £12 million to £14 million was reported in October 2025. Its original publisher, Players Publishing, relaunched its publication under Global Gaming Insider.
PlaySense’s estimated search traffic dropped sharply from late August and remained low through October and early November. The Dutch gaming publication grew out of the PS3-Sense and PSX-Sense community before expanding beyond PlayStation coverage.
In an October 2025 announcement about its ownership and editorial changes, PlaySense said it would add a separate iGaming section alongside its video-game coverage. An Aftermath investigation published in March 2026 subsequently identified Clickout Media as its owner.
CasinoBeats had already lost much of its estimated search traffic before the latest penalty reporting. Its chart shows a prolonged decline from late 2025, a partial summer recovery and another sharp fall in late August. The estimate remained close to the chart’s baseline through autumn.
SBC, the site’s former publisher, announced in January 2025 that its industry coverage was moving to iGamingExpert and that it had decided to sell the CasinoBeats.com domain. iGB Affiliate later identified Clickout Media as the buyer.
Gaming America’s estimated search traffic peaked around June 2026 before falling 95% during July and August. It recovered strongly during September and October, then dropped sharply again near the end of the chart.
The initial collapse looks consistent with the manual Google penalties reported by Press Gazette, which named Gaming America among the sites believed to have been affected. The subsequent recovery proved short-lived, with estimated traffic falling again as November began.
Touati told Press Gazette that 28 casino articles appeared under his byline on Esports Insider’s German-language pages. They covered subjects including Google Pay casinos, credit-card casinos and online baccarat.
The pages displayed update dates between May 15 and July 14, 2026. Touati said his access had been revoked on March 9 and his employment ended on March 23.
“I never wrote or touched any of it, and couldn’t have,” Touati told the publication. He said his work had focused on esports rather than casino content.
The allegations follow an earlier episode involving casino pages attributed to Touati after his departure.
Press Gazette also reported that at least five journalists appeared to have disappeared from Esports Insider and that articles were appearing under a shared editorial-team byline. The profile described a newsroom using automation and other reporting technologies.
0 Comments
