Search results for online gambling decline in the UK

The independent digital marketing agency Greenlight says that its latest study has shown that consumer online search volumes pertaining to sports betting, poker, bingo and casino have suffered their sharpest drop yet.

Brit punters spend GBP 2.3 billion annually on online gambling according to research from Deloitte, commissioned by the Association of British Bookmakers (ABB).

Greenlight’s findings follow hot on the heels of the UK government’s announcement that it will impose secondary licensing and a 15 percent tax rate on remote gaming operators wishing to access the British market from December next year .

Greenlight’s “Gaming Sector Report – Issue 11” profiled consumer search habits on Google UK regarding online gambling enquiries.

The report’s 12 month retrospective shows gaming-related consumer searches totalled 995,830 in July 2013, suffering a sharp 34 percent decline on June’s volume of 1.5 million, the steepest drop yet since August 2012.

Casino enquiries made up the majority of July’s queries, accounting for a 35 percent share, followed by sports betting (31 percent), Bingo (18 percent) then Poker (16 percent).

According to Greenlight, the ten most popular terms used by consumers to find gaming sites across the board were:

‘bingo’ (60,500 searches)
‘online casino’ (60,500 searches)
‘casino’ (49,500 searches)
‘poker’ (33,100 searches)
‘no deposit casino’ (33,100 searches)
‘bet’ (33,100 searches)
‘poker hands’ (22,200 searches)
‘bingo sites’ (22,200 searches)
‘betting calculator’ (18,100 searches)
‘free bingo’ (18,100 searches)

Overall, the most visible site to searchers in the organic listings was paddypower.com which achieved a 44 percent share of voice. In the paid listings however, williamhill.com was the most visible advertiser, securing a 75 percent share of visibility.

On Social Media, Betfair.com had the highest number of YouTube views whilst Paddypower.com had the highest number of subscribers to its channel. However, Wikipedia.org, a non-gaming site, topped Greenlight’s Social Media analysis.