SEO Tracker: Mecca Bingo leads and Foxy Bingo rises, as Gala slips

In recent months when we have looked at the online bingo market, what has transpired has often been a two-horse race between the brick-and-mortar brands Mecca Bingo and Gala Bingo. But in November 2020, it appears that Gala, the once market leader, has slipped, letting Mecca Bingo take the lead and a new challenger, Foxy Bingo, make significant gains in the search results.

Mecca Bingo leads as Gala slips

Mecca Bingo has reassumed its position at the top of the market, following a slip from the market leader Gala Bingo when we looked at the bingo search results back in May 2020.

Our analysis suggests that Gala Bingo has lost around 8,900 monthly visits from the organic, non-brand search, dropping to 20,027 monthly visits from the 319 keywords that we analysed.

The change has come about because Mecca Bingo has regained the position one ranking for the term “bingo” – by far the biggest keyword in the market and a position that was held by Gala Bingo back in May. Mecca Bingo also ranks in position one for the second and third-biggest keywords in the market, “online bingo” and “bingo on line” (sic). These three keywords alone account for 86% of the brand’s traffic from organic non-brand search.

But while Mecca is the market leader, it is generating less traffic from organic search than it was back in May of this year, generating 25,645 from 236 ranking keywords, compared to the 28,001 from 271 ranking keywords that it was generating back in the spring of this year. That is largely down to a slight reduction in search volume in the market.

The story for Gala Bingo has been one of ranking slips across many of the main traffic driving terms. The brand has fallen to position two for “bingo” and retains its second-placed ranking for the next two largest keywords.

The brand has been able to broaden its keyword coverage since we last analysed the market, generating traffic for 305 keyword listings, compared to just 246 back in May. The brand also holds more position one rankings overall when compared to May, with 23 position one listings versus just 16 earlier this year.

This is a sign of a more diverse search marketing strategy being deployed and while most of these ‘new’ rankings will be for relatively low-volume keyword terms, this will have gone some way to absorbing the loss of an estimated 12,684 (including the impact of the reduction in search volume) clicks from the loss of the position one bingo ranking.

Foxy Bingo comes out of hibernation to surge up the rankings

One of the big winners in the last few months has been Foxy Bingo, which is now the third most-visible brand in the market, just 141 clicks behind Gala Bingo.

The brand has seen a significant uplift in its rankings for many of the higher-volume keyword terms in the online bingo market, resulting in a notable increase since May 2020. Back then, the brand was generating 7,835 clicks from organic non-brand search but is currently enjoying a visibility of 19,886 – a significant increase, particularly in the context of the declining search volumes.

A big source of this increase has been notable ranking increases for some of the higher-volume terms in the market. The brand now ranks in position three for “bingo”, position one for “bingo sites” and has jumped from position six to three for “online bingo”. These three terms alone account for an additional traffic of around 6,850.

Much of Foxy Bingo’s traffic has come at the expense of WhichBingo, which has seen its visibility fall from 18,458 to 12,724 although this reduction appears to be caused by the loss of some duplicated “position zero” results, such as Google Answer Box search results, rather than any particular trends with ranking performance.

Search volume falls from lockdown peaks

The level of activity in the market does seem to have receded in recent months, judging by the changes in search volume, and this is supported by data from Google Trends.

Having peaked in April, search activity for the topic of online bingo has generally returned to normal levels and has actually dropped year-on-year this November (at the time of writing).

But as we reported back in May, engagement generally with online bingo has increased since 2018, with search activity showing an upward trend. Back then we reported a market with lots to be positive about and there are still signs to be positive, even if the market has corrected itself somewhat from the unprecedented events of the spring of 2020.