If you decide to search for most popular online casinos, you will get exactly 171 Thousand results! And we mean the exact term. If you search for the broad term, the number of results jumps to over 1 million.
I am pretty sure that if you check all of them, you won’t find a single identical list. Each site will list different casinos. Why is that? The thing is, most sites will just list the casinos they are familiar with or work with, which has nothing to do with their popularity. The question is: can you really objectively determine which online casino is the most popular?
In land-based casinos, it’s simple. You just need to check how many visitors entered its doors in a particular year, and that’s it. Online is a different story.
First, most of them are private companies; therefore, they do not post official results. Second, even if they did, what exactly determines the popularity of online casino? Is it the number of visitors? The number of depositors? Or maybe the number of new depositors? In either case, we don’t have access to any of those.
So, we decided to go for the next best thing: Google. As we saw with US Presidential Elections and pretty much every aspect of our lives in the past decade, the number of online searches/mentions is one of the most reliable indicators for predicting the popularity of a candidate or the odds of an event. Online casinos are no different.
So that’s exactly what we did. We compared interest in 100 online casinos using Google Trends, and now we present you with an objective answer on which online casinos are the most popular.
*To make our comparison accurate, we always used the word “casino” to try to eliminate the differences between strictly casinos and all-in-one gambling sites (casino+poker+sports-book).
*Google Trends results are relative to the most searched term. So after we found out what it is, we used it as a reference for all the rest.
* Please notice that not all casinos here feature in our Fastest Payout casinos list.
Here we go…
In this review you will find...
Most Popular Online Casinos
Let’s see the top 5 first (at the bottom you can see various additional stats). There are definitely some surprises.
And the winner is: Bet365 🙂 🙂 🙂
Some won’t consider it a big surprise, as we expected it to be in the top 5, but we definitely didn’t expect it to top the charts.
Party casino took the #2 spot. It would be interesting to know which part of the audience are actually casino players, since their most popular brand is Party Poker, and we assume part of the interest comes from there.
A big surprise, at least for all our non-British visitors, is our #3 spot, held by Sky Casino. William Hill took #4, while Gala and Virgin share the final spot in our TOP 5.
Ignition, the first USA casino with fastest payout on the list, shares #7 position.
We must acknowledge that Harrah’s and Grosvenor, the land-based giants, would’ve taken the #2 and #3 spots, but we’ve also compared the interest in their online products, and then they fall towards 8-10 spots.
Most Popular USA Online Casinos
A big surprise came in the US market: we expected Bovada to top the charts, but it was the sister Ignition casino that took first place by a wide margin. We assume that the transition of all Bovada poker activity to Ignition did the job (and that’s the spark you can see on the chart).
Planet 7 and Cool Cat, two casinos powered by the same company, took #2 and #5 spots. Both of them are famous for their frequent, buzz-generating bonuses, and we assume that is why they attract such enormous interest.
Lincoln Casino is definitely the big surprise on the list. We have long been aware of its quality, but see it more as a high-quality, low-publicity brand, though apparently it isn’t so. Raging Bull, the casino which was recently acquired by Silver Oak Group, took the last spot.
Popular Casino Sites UK
Not surprisingly, in the UK, the top spots, except for #1, are held by the major Bookmakers. Small disclaimer before we dive in: if you add Grosvenor Casino to the list, they will finish first with a huge margin. However, we run another test adding the word “online” to all the sites – in that comparison Grosvenor falls to #8-#10 spots, since 75% of the searches related to their brick and mortar casino chain.
We have to admit that the big surprise, at least for us, was the top spot. We expected to see there Ladbrokes, Coral, William Hill, but that’s not the case. Bet365 is the most searched casino among UK gamblers.
The competition for #2-5 spots was close: Sky came second with Ladbrokes close behind. William Hill beat Coral by a tiny margin to take #4.
In terms of trends, no big swings here. We might see a small increase in the popularity of William Hill and Coral in recent months, but that’s it.
Popular Canadian Casinos
Unlike in the UK, bookmakers don’t top the charts in Canada. Three out of the Top 5 sites are strictly casinos. What’s more interesting is that all 3 are pure Yggdrasil Gaming casinos (vs. multi-software sites, which are becoming increasingly popular).
As you can see, bet365 and King Billy casino are the favorite online gambling destinations for Canadians, with a big gap from the rest. Royal Vegas, a competing Microgaming brand, finished 3rd, while Jackpot City’s sister casino, Spin Palace, took the #5 spot.
Betway, the only bookmaker casino on the list, came #4.
Popular Casino Sites in Australia
The results in Australia resemble a bit what we’ve seen in Canada, with one big difference: 888 is out. It’s not even within the TOP 10. The same three Microgaming brands top the charts here, but in a different order.
King Billy Casino takes the top spot, with a small margin above Gunsbet Casino and Royal Vegas. All Slots comes 4th, and Guts Casino and Sportsbook close out our Top 5.
It’s surprising to see that none of the strictly Australian-focused casinos made the list. Gday came close, but finished 6th.
Comparison Charts
Worldwide
USA
United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
