An online casino affiliate has been accused of hacking numerous higher education websites to boost its Google search results.

Last week, web marketing agency eTraffic published a report indicating that an unidentified online casino affiliate site’s surge to the top of Google’s search engine rankings appeared to have been the result of some seriously ‘black hat’ optimization techniques.

Between January and September 2016, the affiliate site in question had gone from Google keyword rankings in the 40s and 50s to top-10, including number one rankings for traditionally pricey keywords/phrases like ‘real money slots,’ ‘online slots real money,’ ‘real slots,’ ‘real online slots’ and ‘play real money slots online.’

eTraffic notes that one of the key factors Google employs when ranking search results is the number of backlinks from top level domains like .gov and .edu. The affiliate had 76 such backlinks from major educational sites in the US and other countries, including New York University, Dartmouth College, Duke University and Stanford University.