Age Gates and Geo-Restrictions on Crawlable Casino Pages

Google's exemption for mandatory gates

Google's guidance on intrusive interstitials is about promotion: overlays that "obstruct users' view of the content, usually for promotional purposes," including app install prompts. Mandatory interstitials are exempt, and Google uses a casino age gate as its example. An age or location check that the law requires is therefore not the same problem as an install prompt, and the install banner guide for casino pages deals with the promotional kind.

Where gates do hide content

The exemption covers the overlay, not what it does to the page. Google's mobile guidance is plain: "Don't lazy-load primary content upon user interaction." Google does not tap buttons. If the gate is the only thing in the HTML and the content arrives after the visitor confirms their age, a crawler sees the gate and nothing else. Google's interstitial guidance asks that the content be overlaid with the interstitial rather than redirected to a different page, and recommends letting verified Googlebot crawl the content without triggering the age gate.

The last row is the simplest pattern: information pages, such as how betting works, terms, help and safer gambling, need no gate, while account creation and play are where age and identity checks happen. Whether that is allowed for a given brand is a licensing question for the operator's compliance team.

Location checks

Location rules come from two different places. For apps, both stores require geo-restriction: Google Play says an app "must prevent access and use from countries, states/territories, or the geographic areas not covered" by the license, and Apple's guideline 5.3.4 says real-money apps "must be geo-restricted to those locations." For websites, the rules come from each market's licensing and advertising conditions, not from the stores. The guide to Google Play and App Store rules for gambling apps covers the app side.

Location checks interact with crawling the same way gates do. If a page shows a block notice instead of its content to requests from outside a market, a crawler outside that market may only see the notice. Keep information pages readable everywhere if you can, show market-specific offers only where they are allowed, and check what a crawler receives, not only what a local visitor sees. The parity rules in the mobile-first indexing guide apply to gated pages as much as to any other.

Pages that should stay open

• Safer gambling information, help lines and self-exclusion routes, such as the ones on our safer gambling page.
• Who operates the site, license details and contact information.
• Terms, privacy and complaints procedures.
• General help articles that explain how products work.