Gambling dominates UK list of priciest (and misspelled) paid search keywords

gambling-uk-paid-search-keywordsGambling-related subjects dominate a recent list of the most expensive (and occasionally misspelled) keywords in the UK’s paid search market.

On Thursday, Search Engine Watch published a list of what it claims are the 100 most expensive keywords in the UK online market. The list was gleaned from a SEMrush dataset of 12m keywords and the average price paid for each on Google AdWords during March 2016.

Topping the list at a whopping £148.51 per click was the phrase “play live blackjack.” In fact, gambling-related terms occupied the entire top-10, all but three positions in the top-25, and 77 out of the entire 100-strong list.

Even the three non-gambling positions in the top-25 are only technically out of step with the pack. All three are lumped into the ‘finance’ category, and the highest ranked of these (at #12) is ‘spreadbetting offers’ (£118.03). To find a truly non-gambling/finance product, you have to go all the way down to #28, when ‘big data systems’ (£97.76) makes an appearance.

Hysterically, the second most expensive keyword is ‘rolete’ (£144.76) which paints a rather unflattering picture of gamblers as being jonesing so bad for a chance to spin the roulette wheel that they’re unable to spell and/or type.

Roulette appears to post particular challenges for online gamblers, as the (not really) words ‘rullet’ (£111.62) and ‘roulet’ (£107.10) also make the top-25. Premature matriculation appears to have contributed to ‘online cas’ (£128.67) making the charts at #6, while the similarly linguistically-challenged ‘online casion’ and ‘casnio’ also make the cut.

While the list abounds with variants of casino, roulette, blackjack, slots and ‘live’ versions of same, there’s not a single reference to poker in the top-100. For that matter, there’s no reference to betting outside of the aforementioned financial products. The full list is viewable below.

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