SEO snapshot: Winners and losers from Google's algorithm updates

Last year was a pretty volatile one in the world of gambling SEO – and the industry more generally. It felt like operators and affiliates of all sizes were evaluating and re-evaluating their site portfolios, and weighing up the pros and cons of entering/exiting/holding firm in various markets.

Against this backdrop has been an almost non-stop run of Google algorithm updates with associated winners and losers. With this in mind, the UK market, which for some sports-focused brands has been seen as valuable but crowded/expensive, has become more appealing.

In this article, we’ll take a look at a few trends and consider what observations can be made.

First taking a look at the keywords shared between some of the bigger mainstream UK betting brands (see chart 1), the importance of brand traffic and rankings is notable, but also how successful (in relative terms) these companies have been at picking up each other’s brand traffic.

Power up

In a volatile SEO landscape, this ability to rely on a certain amount of brand traffic is a great position to be in. While affiliates have many advantages in terms of their ability to more speedily react to opportunities, risks and algorithm updates and rank for ‘comparative’ search terms related to best bookies or top 10 sportsbooks and so on, the raw power of brand is perhaps more important than ever.

The opportunities for operators in the UK would feel to be around informational content and providing depth of insights where they can be an authority, both in terms of time-sensitive news/questions and content (which teams are playing, horses racing etc) and more long-form content around particular tournaments, sports, athletes and odds.

All this can be done without straying too far into traditional affiliate territory of straight-up offering tips or comparing app features, and so on. When we do look at tips-related keywords, it’s notable how (increasingly maligned) Reddit is in the mix, along with YouTube and a mix of ‘newer’ brands and some well-established names (see chart 2).

The human touch

Going the extra mile to communicate effectively to what pages are specifically about through a disciplined approach to URL structure and phraseology remains important and it is notable how many sites on this list do objectively provide human content with real opinions and perspectives.

This should be reassuring for those who have been tempted to go a different route with high-volume AI content with more generalised copy. Looking at a search engine results page (SERP) with more of a split between operators, affiliates and informational sites, there’s a few points to discuss – let’s consider those ranking for the non-brand term ‘sports betting uk’.

This is just one of many variants of the keyword with search volume itself of about 2,500 monthly searches and an estimated cost per click of circa £28.

Content is king

While more specific team, match, sport and odds-related searches are of course in contention, broad searches like this can, we think, give a partial view of the type of sites Google likes for when there are many ‘potential’ sites that could plausibly rank.

In this example, once again, we see some quite familiar sites jostling for top positions that have shown resilience in recent months and years, but also very mainstream operators with very well-established brands.

What we don’t see in this list is a prevalence of bloated sites, AI-focused content sites or even sites defined by user-generated content – perhaps reassuring for some in the sector. At the time of writing, another broad core update is underway – a delightful gift from Google that will keep SEOs, site owners and igaming marketers on their toes well into 2025.

What we can see from these small snapshots of the UK landscape is the continued power of brand, the prevalence of more human-led content at the top of SERPs and, it can’t be ignored, the presence of sites with a concerted focus on off-site SEO and link acquisition in various forms.

Whether this snapshot is reassuring or concerning probably depends on where you sit within the market, but it’ll be interesting to see what 2025 has in store and if the winners of today will be the losers of tomorrow.