Gocompare have done it again – banned from Google. They recently started their old techniques of requesting links from webmasters. They now don’t appear in the search results for their name [gocompare]. Lucky FairInvestment are taking up the challenge whilst GoCompare scramble around.
It looks like they’ve increased their ad spend on Adwords to try to get some more traffic! Come on GoCompare! It’s not the first time you’ve been banned.
Note: to our well-read users, it’s technically a penalty, not a ban.
What Happened?
It looks like they are back to their old link building tricks!
Hi – I`m Alex Jones, Website Manager at gocompare.com….The content will contain a single unobtrusive text link in it back to a relevant page on our site…
Capital One
Credit Made Clearer
lovemoney
Relationship with Your Money
CashQuestions
Personal Finance Problem Solver
Life Cover
Insurance Made Easy
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Are you so sure about this? It might have gone under the radar but GC have just relaunched their website – and from my observations it looks to have no original content or structure remaining. It wouldn’t be the biggest surprise if they’ve lost trust and taken a dip in rankings accordingly. Admittedly, losing the brand terms isn’t the norm but stranger things have happened.
As for the link building…so what, they’re after hosted content – it’s hardly groundbreaking, and pretty harsh if they’ve been penalised for it. It’s a highly competitive sector, links make the difference. So while I do have in mind a naughty scale for the various link acquisition techniques employed by those in this arena, hosted content probably ranks close to the bottom, a step above article submission. It’s all pretty tame.
And where there’s a penalty there isn’t necessarily loss of brand terms – remember moneyexpert anyone? So conversely, losing brand terms doesn’t automatically mean there’s a penalty.
It’s an alternative viewpoint, maybe you’re right but then again maybe you’re wrong – time will tell!
Surely Go Compare must be tired of this merry-go-round of rankings followed by penalties from Google. Although there are obvious short term advantages to the strategy, wouldn’t a more long term approach on their SEO have advantages over the scatter gun approach they currently employ.
A slower more organic ascendancy up the rankings, although harder to achieve is a more worthy long term goal, both from an ethical and commercial standpoint.
@IQ Developer: I’d agree in principle but when you’re a loss making business, with £30m over your head in the form of a strategic loan from a bank which is in the realms of Government ownership (the same government who’s borrowing is through the roof) and one of your competitors can knock you down a peg or two with a well executed ad campaign focusing on an Africa mammal with an Eastern European accent …you tend to lose focus of the long term
SEO principles, I agree with you whole-heartedly. But I can see why they take the short term route, even if it’s not necessarily in their interests.
How times have changed – when a bunch of cowboy SEO’rs can ruin an online business! Since when has buting textlinks been hosted content – LOL
This is very interesting.
http://www.redcardinal.ie/www.redcardinal.ie/link-building/20-04-2009/link-building-in-ultra-competitive-niches/
Looks like the same automated system has been used by other sites: http://lists-archives.org/mandrake-expert/00245-lists-archives-org.html
They’re back: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=go+compare
I think 5 days needs to be seen as a blip not a penalty.
A 5o point penalty like GC got 18 months ago, takes weeks to sort out not days.
To those sanctimonious people who think you can take a site into the top 10 for Car Insurance, without any artifical link building, well it shows how little you know about real seo.
Please show me the top 10 car insuarnce site which has or has had no paid links ?
This does not do your site history any favours, and press such as this does not promote your service very well either.
SEO has changed so much that there are many different avenues to build links now, however, a careful approach is required as google bots are getting much smarter.