Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - North America
Analyst Weblog
Gambling - Opening the Search Engine Spigot
June 30, 2009
It looks as though Congress may soon be voting on the Payments System Protection Act, which partially decriminalizes online gaming. The Act could have massive implications for online gaming and revenues for search engines, as it would allow search engines to sell sponsored listings to gambling companies.
Looking at Hitwise data, I was surprised to see that Gambling websites are already getting a large chunk of their traffic from search engines and some even from paid search listings.
Casino and Poker websites receive a larger share of their traffic from Search Engines than average. In May, Gambling websites received 27.24% of US Internet visits from Search Engines. Hitwise organizes the Gambling parent category into seven sub-categories. I'll focus on Casinos and Poker in this post, leaving aside Bingo, Sports Betting, Lotteries, Directories and Games for the moment. Casinos and Poker websites received 32.19% and 35.62% of visits from Search Engines respectively. This is above the average for All Categories of websites at 26.247%.
Of that search traffic, Casinos received 87.82% of their search traffic from organic listings in the four weeks to June 20th, 2009 and Poker websites 95.22%. To give you a benchmark, the average for All Categories was 92.63% organic and for Shopping & Classifieds 82.56%. Most of the paid traffic terms sending visits to Casino websites were searches for casino resorts, such as Foxwoods and Atlantis. This leaves huge opportunities for search engines to monetize all of that search traffic I mentioned earlier going to gambling websites.
Looking at the search terms sending visits to Gambling websites, one immediately notices the dominance of branded search terms. The top generic, or non-branded query, is "internet casinos" at #110 among search terms sending visits to Gambling websites in the week to 20th June. Next is "free sports picks" at #135, "free casino chip" at #231, "free bingo" at #238 and "free online slots no download" at #246.
In the UK in October, Google lifted a self-imposed ban on gambling related advertising in the UK. This offers an interesting opportunity for cross-market comparison. Comparing paid search traffic to Casinos and Poker websites year over year (i.e. since Google lifted its ban) we find a fairly marked increase in paid traffic. Casinos receive 20% of their search traffic from paid listings in the UK, up more than two-fold year over year. Poker websites receive 8% of their UK search traffic from paid listings, up more than three-fold year over year.
It will be interesting to see if the search engines decide to allow paid listings on gambling content if the Act passes. It will also be interesting to see how marketers respond in the US and whether we'll see intense competition on paid listings for branded terms. This could certainly help boost revenues for the search engines during a downturn.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:09 AM
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In Categories Gambling
Michael Jackson, Twitter and Misspellings
June 29, 2009
It has been widely reported that Michael Jackson's untimely death caused a flurry of online activity last week, downing Twitter, Wikipedia and TMZ and even causing problems for Google News. Searches for "michael jackson" ranked 7th among all search terms last week, accounting for one in every 500 US Internet searches.
The top websites receiving traffic from searches for "michael jackson" were Wikipedia, Google News and Michael Jackson's own website. Taking a category level view, we see that News and Media sites were the biggest recipients of traffic at 18%, followed by Entertainment at 13%, Social Networks at 7% and Music at 6%.
The subject dominated conversations on Twitter, driving that site's traffic to reach a new daily high with share of US Internet visits to Twitter.com reaching 0.24% of all US Internet visits, equivalent to 1 in every 417 US Internet visits (see chart below). Note that we are measuring web visits only, so this excludes mobile access and desktop applications. My colleague across the pond similarly reported that UK visits to Twitter reached an all time high last week.
Charles Arthur of guardian.co.uk asks an interesting question - "which messaging service did you hear about Michael Jackson's death on? (Facebook, Twitter, Twitscoop...)" And contrast this to how you heard about Princess Diana's death or that the Twin Towers had been hit by airplanes. A good follow up might be, where did you turn after hearing about his death and how has that changed?
On a separate note, Hitwise search data reveals what every Michael already knows. People don't know how to spell "michael". The #3 search term that included the word "jackson" last week was "micheal jackson".
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 06:05 PM
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In Categories Personalities
What Canadians are Searching for Online
June 09, 2009
Last week, we did a blog post on the top categories visited by Canadian internet users. We followed that up with a post looking at the number of words used in queries. To follow this theme, today we are posting on what Canadians are searching for online.
The following table shows the top search terms entered into search engines by Canadian Internet users in the twelve weeks to 30th May 2009. The table is divided into two columns to show the highest volume navigational search terms (meaning that most searchers had a clear intent to reach a particular website) and the highest volume generic terms.
As we have seen in other markets, the highest volume terms are navigational, indicating that consumers are using search engines to navigate the Internet. For the most part, searchers have a clear idea of where they want to go and use search engines rather than their browser's address bar to find the desired website.
The highest volume generic search term was "games. This is interesting for a few reasons:
- The highest volume French language search term was "jeux" (French for "games") meaning that the highest volume French and English language search term was the same.
- This is quite different from what we see from Americans. While the search term "games" ranks #18 among search terms sending visits to All Categories in Canada, it ranks #92 in the US.
- Interest in online games is not limited to that single term. Eight of the top 100 search terms in Canada were for games or gaming websites. Four games related terms appear in the above list of the top generic search terms.
Another interesting thing we noticed with this analysis is that 13 of the top 100 search terms are generic, compared to only 9 in the US. We did the analysis in Canada looking further down the list. The ratio of generic terms actually increases to 31 of the top 200 terms This could indicate a couple of things. It could point to lower brand loyalty among Canadians online. It could also indicate that in some categories brand loyalties have yet to develop.
We also grouped search terms by topic and found that after social networks, retail and banking were the most popular groupings. Among the top 100 search terms, 16 were for social networks, 14 for retail websites and 9 for banking. Among the 14 retail websites most were for second hand marketplaces, namely Kijiji, Craigslist, eBay and Lespac. Canadian Tire, Walmart and Home Depot also made the top 100 search terms.
We welcome ideas and suggestions for other topics you'd like to see covered in these posts. Feel free to use the comments section to send ideas.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:06 AM
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In Categories Search
One and Two Word Queries Dominate Canadian Internet Searches
June 08, 2009
More than half of Canadian search terms contain only one or two words. In the twelve weeks to 30th May 2009, 51.56% of Canadian search terms contained one or two words.
Hitwise recently launched Hitwise Canada and as a follow up to my blog post last week on the industries Canadians are visiting online (and the dominance of search), I wanted to get a better understanding of how Canadians search. In this first post in a two part series, I'll just look at keyword length across markets. Later this week, I'll publish some analysis on the content of the queries.
The following chart shows the keyword breakdown of search terms sending visits to websites in Canada, the US and the UK.
Notice that Canadians on average use fewer words in their search queries than Americans, but more than Brits.
Delving a bit deeper, we looked at search terms sending visits to a number of categories. Shopping and Classifieds websites broadly mirror the pattern for All Categories while search terms sending visits to Travel and to News and Media websites tend to be slightly longer. By contrast, 41.87% of search terms sending Canadian visits to Banks and Financial Institutions contained one word.
Marketers looking to fine tune search marketing strategies need an in-depth understanding of the search behaviour of consumers. We'll follow up this post in the next few days with an entry on the types of search terms Canadians use to navigate the web. Stay tuned.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:07 AM
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In Categories Search
