Online Poker vs Casinos – Shifting Tides

9 years ago
Online poker has moved its focus heavily toward social media
14:28
12 Feb

Although many try to put online poker in the same basket with the rest of online casino games, the difference between the two is quite obvious if any serious thought is applied. The luck vs skill argument is almost as old as online poker itself. This article, however, will take a different, more technical approach to demonstrating another significant disparity between the two superficially similar phenomena.

The next few paragraphs will deal with seemingly small, but very important pieces of information. How do online poker customers find a place to play and how does that differ from online casino players? At first glance, it would seem that there isn’t much difference as both may attract pretty much the same pool of people, but a deeper analysis demonstrates it isn’t so.

In fact, recent trends show that poker-related searches on Internet search engines have severely reduced during the last couple of years. The focus of online poker is shifting heavily towards social channels. This is hardly surprising considering the fact that many poker media outlets and poker players alike rely greatly on social pages like Facebook and Twitter to reach their audience/fans.

Unlike poker, things have not really changed much for online casinos. Although online casinos have increased their social media presence, the bulk of their customers still come to them through search engines, often landing on different casino comparison sites, like this one.

Online poker has much more ‘direct’ communication with its players, meaning that comparison sites are not as necessary. There is, of course, still some floating in the vast waters of the Internet ( PokerListings is one good example), but players are mostly reached through different social posts and tweets.

Google search volume: Poker (Blue) vs Casino (Red)

Online casinos are numerous and many of them have been in business long before online poker rooms started popping up. Their business model and approach to customers hasn’t really changed much, and that is the reason we find that casino comparison sites far outnumber those relating to online poker.

Why is it that casinos are not trying to also shift more to social media, seeing how popular it is? The answer could be in the fact that they don’t really need to. People search for online gambling without much incentive.

This reverts back to the earlier point – that casinos’ target audience is not one and the same as that of online poker rooms. Unlike poker, casino games (for the most part) don’t require any particular skill set and can be played by anybody. That is why online casinos will have a much larger potential customer base and their hits on search engines will far outnumber those of poker-related queries.

The searches will often land you on one of the comparison sites instead of a page of an actual casino. The reason is simple – the big number of casino-related searches translates into a number of pages offering relating results.

While the focus of online poker has taken a significant turn, it seems that search engines will remain a number one source of customers for online operators offering casino games, and that there is no reason to change as the current model clearly fits best with the industry.


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Ivan Potocki is the editor in chief and one of the lead news writers for PokerTube. His natural flair and enthusiasm for journalism combined with a deep poker knowledge make him an exciting contributor for PokerTube.The experience garnered playing poker professionally for several years and the knowl...Read more

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