Case study · Sports media

ESPN Cricinfo: a record 120M monthly visits

Cricinfo was already the reference site for cricket. The job was to find growth where there seemed to be none left, and to lift the traffic floor between big matches.

Get My Growth Plan How we did it

Data: Google Search Console for the starting point; results as reported.

What changed

120M monthly visits, the highest in the site's history, and Top-2 rankings held against broadcasters, apps and news sites.

Results
The evidence

Results

A Record Year for the Reference Site

120Mmonthly visits, the highest in the site's historyResult
Top-2rankings for every major cricket keywordResult
586MGoogle clicks in the 12 months to April 2023Starting point
15SEO specialists led, across 30+ accountsTeam

What changed

120M monthly visits, the highest in the site's history.
Top-2 rankings across all major cricket keywords, held against broadcasters, apps and news sites.
A repeatable match-week playbook the content team could run on its own, without waiting for SEO sign-off.
Delivered in parallel while the same team ran 30+ US and Canadian accounts.

The evidence

Where We Started, in Search Console

Google Search Console performance for ESPN Cricinfo, 12 months to April 2023 — Google Search Console, 12 months to April 2023: 586M clicks, 12.1B impressions, average position 5.3. Sharp spikes around big series, with a low baseline between them.

Google Search Console performance for ESPN Cricinfo, 3 months to April 2023 — Google Search Console, 3 months to April 2023: 156M clicks, 3.26B impressions, average position 4.8. This is roughly where the engagement began.

Why it needed work

There was no easy growth left, and traffic fell straight back after every big match.

Where things stood

Where things stood

Winning Match Days, With a Low Floor Between Them

When the work began in March 2023, there was no easy growth left. On every big match day, broadcasters, betting sites, score apps and news outlets fought for the same searches, and many of them could publish or load faster.

In the 12 months to April 2023, Google sent 586M clicks from 12.1B impressions at an average position of 5.3. Traffic spiked around big matches and fell straight back afterwards. The site won match days, but the floor between them was low.

Who it was for

The reference site for cricket, competing with broadcasters, betting sites, score apps and news outlets on every match day.

The client

The client

ESPN Cricinfo, Sports Media

Client: ESPN Cricinfo
Industry: Sports media
Period: March 2023 to June 2024
Data: Google Search Console for the starting point; results as reported

How we did it

Pages indexed before demand peaks, entities marked up, and internal links that hold traffic between series.

What we did
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What we did

Win the Match Before It Starts

01
Match-week content plan
Briefs were ready before the toss, so previews, squads and head-to-head pages were indexed before searches peaked. Reports and stats went live the same evening.
02
Schema for cricket entities
Players, teams, venues, series and matches were marked up so Google treated Cricinfo as the source for each one.
03
Internal linking
Match pages passed authority up to series, team and player hubs instead of leaking it, which raised the baseline between series.
04
Page speed
Core Web Vitals were fixed on the highest-traffic templates first: scorecards and live commentary.

ESPN Cricinfo in one line

Win the match before it starts: pages indexed before demand peaks, and internal links that hold traffic between series.

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