SEO Tracker: PokerStars leads in a changing online poker market
In this month's SEO Tracker, Stickyeyes analyses trends in the online poker search market
When it comes to the online poker market, one keyword tends to hold the key to market leadership. But as PokerStars is the one that holds the cards at the moment, competition for traffic is coming from some unlikely sources.
PokerStars heads the market but informational and free sites grow
PokerStars has assumed leadership of the online poker segment, attracting around 16,670 visits from the 98 biggest non-brand keywords in the market.
This puts it ahead of PokerStars, which generates just over 10,500 from organic search, and the third-placed Full Tilt (4,622).
PokerStars earns its position as market leader primarily for a position two ranking for the term “poker” which, with a search volume of 33,100 is the biggest keyword in the market. Position one for this keyword is actually held by Wikipedia, but position two makes PokerStars the highest-ranked commercial operator and it generates around 26% of its organic, non-brand traffic.
The keyword “poker play” actually gives PokerStars slightly more traffic, on account of the brand ranking in position one. The brand also ranks in position one for “online poker” and in position two for “poker games”. These three keywords, along with “poker” account for 71% of the brand’s organic non-brand traffic.
For partypoker, the story is a similar one of very consistent rankings across the main keywords, albeit in one or two positions behind PokerStars. The brand ranks in position three for “poker”, “poker play” and “poker games”, although it out-performs its rival for the term “texas holdem”, where it lies second behind Wikipedia.
Interestingly, in this analysis of the online poker market, we have seen an increased prominence of more informational sites in the search results. While we discount from our leadership tables in order to emphasise the performance of the commercial operators and affiliates, it is notable this time around that sites such as Wikipedia, as well as free sites and informational sites, seem to be more prominent in the search results. For example, the free game 247freepoker.com generates more organic traffic than partypoker.com while another free operator, Zynga Poker, is also prominent.
Is this the result of an increase in people searching with a more informational intent? Is it a reflection of an increase in people looking to pass the time in lockdown with no-money gaming? Either way, it is no surprise to see this reflected in Google search results. Google wants to reward content that matches user intent and, given that user intent that we would normally expect to see is likely to have been somewhat subverted by the current climate (an issue far from isolated to igaming), it could be that search results pages do start to look somewhat different to what we would ordinarily expect.
Online interest returns to pre-lockdown levels, despite a massive spike in July
When we last looked at the online poker market back in April 2020, the UK was roughly one-month into the original Covid-19 lockdown.
At the time, the gaming industry as a whole was essentially put “on notice” by gaming and advertising regulators not to capitalise on the situation. While the industry generally heeded that warning, it didn’t stop online interest in almost all segments of the igaming sector (with the obvious exception of sports betting) from experiencing unseasonal peaks in search activity.
But the peak that we saw in March paled into relative insignificance in July 2020, where interest in online poker shot to more than three times the March peak.
This increase coincided with the announcement that land-based casinos in the United Kingdom would be required to remain closed, despite a plea from the Betting and Gaming Council to the government to allow casinos to reopen.
Since that peak however, the search interest has gone back to pre-lockdown levels, according to Google Search Trends.
While lockdown restrictions have generally eased, it may be that these trends emerge on a more localised level as and when different regions experience differing levels of Covid-related restrictions. Should more regions of the country start to experience the most severe forms of restrictions, it may be that we see new peaks appear – which then go on to dissipate as and when restrictions go on to ease.