Affiliate Tracker: Volatile search rankings cause havoc in emerging markets
In a monthly series of data analysis, Deep Competitive Intelligence explores the top affiliate traffic generators for February 2023
DEEPCI.com global affiliate channel traffic update – February 2023 report
Due to Google’s confirmed product update and a number of other unsubstantiated algorithmic modifications, February’s affiliate traffic of international igaming operators was extremely unstable.
At the time of writing, updates were still taking place, so it won’t be until March that the full impact can be assessed. In the meantime, the larger SEO community will be conducting analyses on these updates, but they will undoubtedly be alarmed by the sharp rise in the rankings of so-called ‘parasite’ SEO sites.
However, February’s data has seen many igaming brands experience an improvement in their own rankings, particularly for the head search phrases in the developed markets.
The overall impact of the product update-based volatility is more noticeable in emerging markets, particularly in Latam, where a number of authority SEO sites have experienced significant growth and new competitors have entered the top 10 Google results, especially for the head search terms.
Due to growing competition and their propensity to be more sensitive to Google updates, these marketplaces will likely continue to be unstable for some time.
Mature markets seem to be more stable. The traffic received by the already dominant brands have reached an equilibrium due to the prevalence of those brands across so many of the top sites. An affiliate site dropping from, say, position two to three for sports in the UK will have a limited impact on affiliate traffic received by the large brands on that site, as they are likely to occupy high positions on the site that gained position.
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