Data: Gaming brands respond to Google’s HTTPS warning

At the end of 2016, more than half of the top 15 ranking pages were behind a secure protocol. How key is customer security in Google search results?

In August 2014, Google announced it would be considering HTTPS as a ranking signal in its search algorithm. While the search engine did at the time suggest that it was a relatively minor factor, evidence suggests that HTTPs pages are now making up more than 50% of the online gaming search results – and that in a number of sectors, HTTPS seems to be even more prominent.

Of course, HTTPS is not a new technology and it is something online users are relatively familiar with (even if somewhat passively). However, its usage had previously been largely limited to ecommerce applications like online checkouts and login screens. What Google is seemingly encouraging here is a blanket use of HTTPS, under the pretence that it helps deliver a more secure and trustworthy result.

A more secure search result
Our analysis of the market as a whole found that, at around the time Google had announced it would be considering HTTPS, just under 16% of the top 15 results in the gaming sector were behind a HTTPS protocol. While this was still significantly higher than the average across all of the sectors analysed, it was still a relatively small proportion of the search results. You can read more about at www.stickyeyes.com/egr.

However, since that announcement the number of HTTPS results has grown markedly. In October 2015, we saw the number of HTTPS pages within the top 15 results grow to 37.35% – a notable jump from 15.94% in August 2015. Fast forward to the end of 2016 and more than half of the pages ranking in the top 15 across the gaming sector are now behind a HTTPS protocol.

Much of this increase is being driven by individual verticals within the gaming sector, with almost three-quarters of pages within the top ranking bingo search results having a HTTPS prefix.

For the bingo sector in particular, HTTPS appears to be an important factor that, while it may not make or break a site’s rankings, is certainly beneficial for a brand. While all gaming verticals noted an upliſt in October 2014 (less than two months aſter the Google announcement) the proportion of bingo sites with a HTTPS prefix increased from 25.19% to 62.44% when compared to two months prior. That increase in the bingo sector continued to grow, topping at 71.6% in November 2016, and it stands in February 2017 at 72.35%.

While other verticals have also seen increases in the proportion of HTTPS pages appearing in search results, it is to a much lesser extent. Casino is the only other vertical with more than 50% of top 15 results returning a HTTPS page, while sports betting and poker are both below 50% (46.4% and 48.8% respectively).

How big a ranking signal is HTTPS?
What we have seen across all search results is that in industries that tend to have larger websites with a greater volume of pages, there tends to be a lower proportion of HTTPS pages. This will, to a degree, explain the lower proportion of HTTPS pages in sports betting.

Sports bookmakers tend to have the deepest websites within the industry, largely because every individual sporting event is listed on its own indexed URL. Because of the nature of sporting events, the lifetime of those URLs is also very short, guaranteeing fresh content.

On the other hand, bingo and casino websites tend to be significantly smaller. The games served on these sites tend to remain on a single static URL for a considerable period of time and as a result, Google has fewer pages to index.

What it isn’t possible to determine is whether these increases are the result of changes within the search algorithm, or whether it is simply a case of more of the top-ranking domains simply transferring to HTTPS. What is most likely is that it is a blend of the two. However, the message is that if you aren’t adopting HTTPS for your pages, you could be putting yourself at a significant disadvantage.