Searching for sports betting odds? Google is here to help.
The search engine website has reportedly started showing betting odds in its search result’s featured snippets. To see the snippet, one has to include “odds” in the search query along with the sporting event, teams or players, according to The SEM Post.
Nevertheless, featured snippets will likely become a hot topic especially among betting sites that will be vying to rank for these search terms. Featured snippets SEO is not yet popular at this time, since many verticals are still pushing for content marketing, community building and engagement, and data visualization. Gaming sites in particular are falling behind when it comes to SEO.
But back to betting predictions. Microsoft’s Bing has also forayed into the market with their Bing Predicts program. It started as a tool to predict weather, but Bing Predicts soon gained popularity for accurately predicting winners and losers, first with the talent show American Idol, then politics, and finally, sporting events.
Whereas Google pulls information from tables and spreadsheets from websites, Bing Predicts doesn’t link to outside sources for predictions. What Bing does, according to website Make Use Of, is it analyzes signals from across the web to get a “background” evaluation of a party or contestant’s potential for success.
Sporting events, however, are different. Instead of popularity, the predictions are based on the team’s history, including previous wins, championship successes, and results from past matches. Bing also evaluates data of each team’s key players, places where games are held, and even weather conditions.
To date, the program has predicted the winners of major sporting events, such as the World Cup 2014, NFL, and recently, the Women’s World Cup.
It’s important to note that both the Google odds snippets and Bing Predicts are only available in certain areas. The results from initial report on Google odds snippets are from the UK version of the search engine.
