A recent study by an independent gaming consultant has provided some insight into the online brand strength of some of the industry's bigger names.
The study was undertaken by Josh Apiafi of Apiafi Associates, an independent gaming consultancy. Apiafi was engaged by an organization looking to enter the market to test the relative brand strength of the industry's 10 biggest brands - Party Poker, Betfair, 888, bwin, bet365, Paddy Power, Bodog, Ladbrokes, William Hill and Pokerstars.
Apiafi's methodology was simple - track daily Google alerts for each of these brands for a given period to get a metric for the number of internet users following each organizations web developments.
Google alerts are a service provided by Google which enables subscribers to be alerted by feed or email of any defined web development - news of a defined category, changes to a defined website etc. By tracing the number of alerts requested in respect of each of the above brands, the study was able to show the level of internet awareness of these brands. Given Google's dominant web presence, any observed data was thought to be a reasonably robust metric.
Apiafi said of the test methodology, 'The method's simplicity is its trump card. Equally, the results were very consistent on a daily basis - this wasn't a case of one brand having a lot to shout about during this particular period or having one or two very strong days that skewed the data'.
So the results...
(average daily Alert requests)
1. Bodog 510
2. PokerStars 493
3. Betfair 467
4. Paddy Power 437
5. Ladbrokes 421
6. Bet365 414
7. William Hill 395
8. BWin 178
9. Party Poker 175
10. 888 99
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