SEO snapshot: The changing face of NFL SERPs

When it comes to the market opportunity in the US, it’s worth remembering that of the millions of sports fans from coast to coast, not every fan will take an interest in betting.

So, when the NFL season rolls around, popular ‘money’ terms like “NFL picks” are often used by fans who simply want to follow team news, speculate about players, and potentially stick to playing in fantasy leagues with friends.

As you’d expect, overall interest in the term is seasonal – spiking during the NFL season’s early game weeks and starting to decline when the playoffs and post-season roll around (with interest slightly being renewed during the annual Draft).

Although ‘NFL picks’ has being a popular search query far longer than legalized betting has been a viable concept in the US, are we seeing a shift in the way in which Google is contextualizing and ranking content in light of online gambling being further ingrained in the consciousness of the American public?

Certainly, the total volume of searches for this specific term – and others like it – while undoubtedly substantial (an average of 864,690 searches every month), hasn’t risen enormously in the past few years, even as more states move to provide regulated betting.

But let’s delve a little deeper into the search engine results pages (SERPs) themselves. In the three years since the Supreme Court struck down the PASPA in May 2018, paving the way for legalized sports betting in the States, the speed at which operators, affiliates, and users alike have embraced online betting is clear to see from the changing nature of the ‘nfl picks’ SERPs – there definitely appears to have been an evolution in what Google considers to be the ‘right’ answer for the term.

Looking back to October 2018, some five months after the Supreme Court decision, only one site in the top 10 and six in the top 20 US Google rankings contained betting-related content or picks.

Fast-forward three years later, to October 2021, and the SERPs tell a very different story. While non-betting content from the likes of the official NFL site, CBS Sports, and ESPN still have the edge over gambling-related pages, there’s definitely been a breakthrough that reflects the increasing public and regulatory acceptability of online gaming.

Three sites in the top 10 and nine in the top 20 for ‘NFL picks’ incorporate overt betting content, with Google undoubtedly favoring affiliates providing predictions-driven articles over operator product pages at this point.

In summary, while mainstream media and fan sites alike will continue to take up space on Google in response to queries about sports such as the NFL, the market is moving quickly to absorb betting content.

That will mean ordinary fans – whether they like it or not – increasingly getting their content from sites that either have a direct or indirect association with betting.

This may have implications for how people view their favorite sports (and how they consume content) but the direction of travel is clear.

Betting brands should be mindful however – with all the present hunger for site acquisitions, steps must be taken to maintain and increase the value of site traffic – or those investments will be seen as all too hasty.