How Blask turns share of search into brand demand
Share of search in iGaming shows which operators players already have in mind, and it tends to move before market share does.
Revenue reports describe a market after the fact. Share of search describes it while players are still choosing. The idea comes from marketing effectiveness research. It fits iGaming well, because a player usually types a brand name before registering.
What is share of search
Share of search (SoS) is the fraction of all brand searches in a category that belong to one brand.
SoS = searches for the brand ÷ searches for all brands in the category × 100
A brand with 150,000 monthly searches in a category of 1.5M searches holds 10% share of search. One in every ten branded searches in that market goes to it.
Where the theory comes from
Les Binet, head of effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, presented the metric at IPA EffWorks in October 2020. He tested it on cars, energy and mobile phones. In all three categories, share of search tracked market share.
A year later, an IPA think tank led by James Hankins extended the test to 30 cases across 12 categories and seven countries. The average correlation between share of search and market share came out at 83%.
The link also holds in motion. When a brand’s share of search changes year over year, its market share tends to move the same way.
The logic is simple. People search for brands they already consider. Share of search shows how often a brand comes to mind at the moment of choice, and that share later turns into purchases.
Because consideration comes before purchase, SoS usually moves first. Binet found the lead can reach a year in cars. His LG example shows the pattern: the brand started losing search share in 2008, and its market share followed in 2009.
Binet also gave the gap a name: extra share of search. When a brand’s share of search sits above its market share, the brand tends to grow. When it sits below, the brand tends to shrink.
Share of search vs share of voice
The two metrics look at the same market from opposite directions.
| Share of voice | Share of search | |
|---|---|---|
| Direction | Brand → market | Market → brand |
| Measures | Ad spend, PR, social reach | Searches players start themselves |
| Controlled by the brand | Directly | Only indirectly |
| When advertising stops | Drops at once | Declines over quarters |
| Link to market share | Indirect | Direct (83% average correlation) |
Share of voice shows how loudly a brand talks. Share of search shows how many people answer. Binet’s data shows the link between them. Advertising lifts searches quickly, but most of that lift fades. A smaller long-term effect builds up over years.
Search share does not survive silence forever either. IPA data shows that after two quarters without advertising, share of search falls by about 20% on average. Strong brands lose it more slowly.
Where raw share of search misleads
The formula assumes every branded search means interest. In practice, four things break that assumption:
- Negative intent. A fine, an outage or a payout dispute produces a search spike. Raw SoS reads it as growing demand.
- Spelling variants. “merrybet” and “merry bet” appear as separate terms in Google Trends, so the brand’s share gets split.
- Data revisions. Google can revise historical search data, which shifts past shares.
- Timing. SoS predicts direction, not the date. A single week of movement is noise until a trend confirms it.
An SoS model for iGaming has to correct for all four before the ratio means anything.
The keyword set alone can change the result. Kantar tested this on five US car brands. A basic Google Trends comparison put Ford first. After Kantar added model names and related queries, about 30,000 keywords in total, Toyota took the lead. The expanded set found 36% more search interest on average than the brand names alone.
Even clean search data does not convert at the same rate for every brand. Binet’s car market data shows the effect of price. Cheaper brands such as Hyundai and Skoda turned each point of search share into more sales than the market average. Premium brands such as Jaguar and Volvo turned it into fewer.
In iGaming, the equivalent factors are bonuses, odds and the product itself. That is why Blask keeps share of search (BAP) separate from the metrics that estimate acquisition and revenue.
How Blask applies share of search to iGaming
Blask builds its metrics on the share of search methodology, using Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends data. Before calculating anything, Blask keeps queries with relevant intent (“bet365 betting”, “paddy power login”) and drops complaint and news patterns. It also merges spelling variants, re-collects past periods to catch revisions, and adjusts for seasonality.
Two metrics come out of this process:
- Blask Index is a real-time measure of market demand volume for iGaming brands in a given country, based on normalized search data. It shows whether demand for a brand or a market is rising or falling.
- BAP (Brand’s Accumulated Power) is the share of search itself: a brand’s percentage of total measured demand in a country and period.
BAP = brand Blask Index ÷ market Blask Index × 100%
A brand with 12% BAP holds 12% of tracked brand demand in that market. That is a share of attention, not a 12% share of GGR or NGR.
💡 Key point: Blask’s internal analysis of iGaming markets found a 95% correlation between share of search and market share.
📚 Read more: How Blask measures, calculates, and presents iGaming market intelligence
Share of search in practice: William Hill
William Hill shows the theory at work. UK brand demand grew 12.7% in 2025. William Hill’s Blask Index fell 12.6% over the same period.
| Period | UK market, Blask Index | William Hill, Blask Index | William Hill, BAP |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 530.6M | 75.4M | 14.2% |
| 2025 | 597.9M | 65.9M | 11.0% |
| H1 2026 | 299.0M | 24.9M | 8.3% |
The search decline started early. William Hill held 16.6% of UK brand demand in Q1 2024 and 11.6% by Q4 2024. Revenue did not show it yet. Evoke, William Hill’s owner, reported 5% growth in UK and Ireland online revenue for 2024.
The revenue turned a year later. In its 2025 results, Evoke reported a 3% fall in UK and Ireland online revenue, with sports betting down 12%. By then, Bet365 had overtaken William Hill in Blask’s UK ranking.
Search share alone does not explain why the revenue fell. Evoke’s online segment also includes 888, and favourable sports results lifted Q4 2024. Still, the direction showed up in search about a year before it reached the income statement.
How to read share of search over time
A single SoS figure says little. Movement over time is the signal. For iGaming brand benchmarking, watch four patterns:
- Steady climb over 30–90 days. A brand moving from 6% to 8% in two months is accelerating. The cause is usually traceable: a league start, a bonus campaign, new affiliates, a licence.
- Share flat while the market grows. If the market’s Blask Index rises 20% during a tournament and a brand’s share stays flat, that brand missed its part of the seasonal lift.
- Fast start for a new entrant. A newly licensed brand that reaches 1–2% share within 90 days has real demand-generation capacity.
- Slow drift down. William Hill lost one or two points a quarter. No single month looked alarming. Over two years, the brand lost half its share.
Bottom line
Share of search works because players search for the brands they are about to choose. That is why it moves before market share. In iGaming, it only works after the data is cleaned of complaints, spelling splits and noise. William Hill’s case shows the payoff: its search share fell through 2024, and its revenue followed in 2025.
FAQ
Who created the share of search metric?
Is BAP the same as share of search?
Does share of search predict revenue?
