The 6 month rule of acquiring gamers through search

We’ve found that for some classic games, search has been a good way to acquire users. In our research though, we’re consistently finding that new websites don’t immediately rank on Google. On average, your site would start to rank and get some traction after at least 6 months. Some people call this the search penalty box for that reason for newly launched sites. 

We had launched a site previously called Walkabout.fm that provided automated walking tours based on Wikipedia data, and we saw a similar trend. After about 6 months, we saw that we were able to get more traffic from Google. 

We’ve also seen that a number of gaming sites link to their other games which are hosted on different domains. From our research, we believe this is likely a tide that lifts all boats for search traffic. If one game gains traction, the fact that it links to another game can also help that game get traction as well.

While we started with solitaire games, our goal is to have a great portfolio of fun classic games. With this knowledge, we decided to launch a few new domains. We already launched Spider and FreeCell sites, which have started to get a few visitors a month after launch. 

Most recently though, we launched a Mahjong game. It’s a solitaire-type game where you play on your own that is based on matching. 

Along with the Mahjong game, we also launched a scrabble word solving game called Unscrambled-Words. Not surprisingly, Scrabble continues to be one of the most popular games played across the world. It turns out, many people want help when they’re playing or practicing. Based on our research, we estimate there are millions of searches a month for people looking to unscramble words.

With both these sites, our hope is 6 months from now, they’ll start to see traction. We also think by mentioning our other games on each site, we can cross pollinate traffic and they can all grow together. 

I’ll keep you posted!