The other day I was thinking and, seeing that SEO is not only my passion but also puts bread on my table, my thoughts usually involve Google or Yahoo or that other search engine… you know, it starts with a B… they spent like a billion pounds recently shoving their name down people’s throats and still no one even remembers it… the search engine who’s fourth biggest traffic source is Google… anyway the name doesn’t really matter. The point is I got to wondering which of the two biggest staples of online gaming is being searched for the most in Google, which one is rocking Google’s boat and which one is barely making any waves in the online ocean. Poker or Casino?
The best way to find out which keywords are searched the most in the Big G is to pay a visit to their Trends page, another little witty tool created by the Google Team that apart from comparing key phrases amongst each other also shows how they perform in different regions, cities and languages. All the user has to do is enter the keywords to be compared in the search bar separated by commas which in this case is the following: online casino, online poker. After pressing enter, a very interesting chart and statistics were displayed that shocked me a little. You’ve changed online gaming, you’ve changed dude!
The figure above shows the comparison between worldwide searches for online poker and online casino in Google over the past years. A quick note to the keyword ‘online’ being present as a comparison between just casino and poker could have distorted results because some users might have been interested in the movie Casino or a land based casino or the rules of poker itself.
Before I looked at the graph my initial thoughts were that searches for online poker would outrank searches for online casino and they would never come anywhere close to each other, ever. I was wrong! I admit it; yes I was wrong, mea culpa, please don’t hit me. From 2004 to early 2010 it’s exactly as I predicted but in mid 2010 there it was - searches for online casino not only came close to its counterpart, but actually overtook them. How did this happen?!
A few fascinating facts also caught my eye such as in South Africa, Israel and India where searches for online casino outrank online poker consistently whereas in Romania it’s the other way round with a ratio of almost six to one. Furthermore, did you know that Romanian, Italian and Hungarian are the languages where the difference between both is the highest - all in favour of poker - and that Russian is the language where the difference is the least, almost equal. Did you know that? Well now you do! You’re welcome.
Now if you look closely at the graph again, towards the end which is early 2011 or the year we currently live in for those of you in any doubt, we can see that poker searches are dipping and casino searches are rising, both at a very fast pace. Will the takeover happen again and if so how long will it stay put this time. For ever? Only time will tell ladies and gentlemen. Only time will tell!
So what does this actually mean? Oh, I’m sorry I have run out of time. If you have any SEO questions let me know... seo@egamingc.com
Great Post! I like the writer's style! :)
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