Data: Online bingo search visibility
Digital marketing agency Stickyeyes examines the online bingo sector and how mobile gaming is now becoming the key battleground
When we looked at the bingo market back in December 2015, it was Foxy Bingo that was very much leading the way in organic search. In a search market which is dominated by a small number of short-tail keywords (the keyword term âbingoâ accounts for roughly one quarter of the total search volume in this sector alone), Foxy has actually managed to increase its organic search traffic by 3% in the last six months, from a similar number of keywords.
Our analysis, which encompasses 319 keywords in the bingo market, predicts the estimated traffic that a brand could expect based on their ranking position for each keyword, and the likely click-through rate of that ranking position.
Back in December, we saw that Foxy Bingo was being followed by both Booty Bingo and Mummies Bingo. But in April 2016, it has become a two-horse race for visibility as Mummies Bingo has seen its ranking positions fluctuate signiï¬cantly in the last eight months.
The brand has gone from being the ninth most visible in August 2015 to the second most visible in December, and has since returned to seventh position in April 2016.
The beneï¬ciaries of the fall of Mummies Bingo in the search rankings appear to be Bingo Stars and Lucky Pants Bingo, which have climbed seven and 10 places respectively to sit third and fourth in the market.
We have also seen Paddy Power signiï¬cantly increase its visibility in the online bingo market, after struggling to achieve rankings in the past. The brand has seen a 1,040% uplift in search visibility, moving up 33 places to become the 14th most visible brand. Of course, there is still work for the brand to do in order to compete on the core traffic-driving terms, but such rapid growth in such a short space of time cannot go unnoticed.
Such a meteoric rise could be an indication that Google is once again starting to favour the more established and respected brands in this market, given that affiliate websites and lesser-known operators had attracted notable traffic levels in this SERP previously. The rise of Coral also supports that notion, having risen 19 positions in the last eight months and increased visibility by 385%.
Conversely, a number of lesser-known brands have suffered declines in visibility and Bingo Godz in particular, which was the sixth most visible brand in December, is no longer among the top 10. The brand now ranks for just 14 keywords, compared to the 133 keywords back in December (including a second-placed ranking for the term âbingoâ), highlighting the level of volatility that remains in this traditionally scrutinised search engine market.
New Look Bingo is another brand to have experienced a drop, having seen visibility fall by as much as 65% since December.
The mobile battleground
Search volume for the online bingo market has increased by 54% over the last two years. However, desktop searches have only accounted for 4% of this increase.
Mobile searches, on the other hand, have increased by 159% and mobile now surpasses desktop as the most searched-on device in this market.
Interestingly, the visibility of operators in the mobile search results exactly mirrors that of the desktop search market.
Each of the top 10 operators have mobile friendly compliant websites and have strong page speed scores for both mobile and desktop, suggesting that these operators have identiï¬ed and adapted to long-term trends.