Russia is restricting gambling search results

Russia’s watchdog has reached a preliminary deal with search engines on ways to stop locals from accessing banned sites.

Roskomnadzor (The Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications) has reached a preliminary deal with local search engines on how to stop Russian residents from accessing banned gambling sites.

The entity met with search engines such as Yandex, mail.ru and Sputnik to make sure that local residents don’t have the possibility to enter thousands of sites that are included in its blacklist.

Officials of Roskomnadzor told the companies how they expect to delete online references to sites that are currently blacklisted. Moreover, the watchdog said that it will establish an automated service that will notify search engines to blacklist updates, and companies will have three days to block the offender from the results.

Russian lawmakers are expected to add more measures to the issue during this fall session, as the penalties for search engines that violate the rules are not specified. Last month, the agency blacklisted approximately 6000 gambling-related sites.

As reported last month, Russian authorities revealed that during the first six months of the year, complaints about unauthorised gaming operations grew 235 percent. The first half of the year noted 38,700 public complaints about illegal gaming platforms in Russia.

Furthermore, gambling affiliate Bookmakers Ratings revealed that the Eurasian country is set to triple its regulated sports betting industry in the next five years, as the country will host sports events like the upcoming FIFA World Cup in 2018.