Go Compare and the GoCompare.com site have been banned from Google. As we reported on the 2nd January, GoCompare were appearing in the top spot for car insurance. It looks like Google may have found out about their Paid Links.
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Very interesting. How can you tell they’ve been banned? A search for “gocompare” doesn’t show anything, at least not on page 1, but with “gocompare.com” they do show up.
Are you referring to searches for “car insurance” and the like?
Thanks,
Rob.
Looks like GC are back in Google – now ranking 51st for “Car Insurance”
It looks like a +50 penalty guys – they are 52nd for ‘go compare’ (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=go+compare&hl=en&start=50&sa=N) and 51st for ‘car insurance’ (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=car+insurance&hl=en&start=50&sa=N)
Yes agree, they seem to have incurred a -50 penalty from Google.
Many positions are now in the 40’s, so I doubt its a 50 point penalty.
Will have to let time pass before we work out what happens here.
I can’t see how these guys get penalised when other dont, if it is it will political rather than the fact there worse than anyone else.
Well I be blowed, did Google act on the payperpost and Watching America links?
Strange now that confused.com are #1 but with a description – “We are sorry but confused.com is currently unavailable Please try again later.” – clicking on the link takes you through to confused.com as normal. Google seem to be playing around with the rankings at the moment.
Appears the search results for “car insurance” has been fluctuating alot.
An insurance seo guy – as you say confused @ #1 and GC #65 now.
The Confused page was indexed by Google when the site was unavailable hence the description.
I don’t think confused.com will be too happy at their result! Can anyone else see the error message in their listing? Big G must have recached yesterday during some down-time. I don’t reckon it’ll last long. Nice for them to be number 1 again tho.
P.S. Interestingly Confused.com’s listing is fine for ‘cheap car insurance’ and ‘compare car insurance’ results.
The question is how long will it take them to recover, come on Kevin it only took MSM 10 days http://www.insiders-view.co.uk/moneysupermarket-banned-by-google-for-spamming/0045
That’s ya target…
Indeed – Kevin, not much noise coming from yourself on this one? What’s the situation?
I’ve seen them return to #1 for a few DCs. Can anyone confirm?
Still seeing them ranking in 65th.
They appeared for [car insurance] under Google.co.uk and pages from the UK
Definitely mid-update. Problem is, is that punishment enough for spamming the Google index with paid for links? Compare the amount of money to be made, against the cost and 24 hours downtime once in a while. Me thinks that’s not a strong enough deterrent.
GoCompare hasn’t been banned from Google SERPS, penalized yes, but not banned. A big difference between banned and penalized.
TrafficPower.com…now there’s a site that’s been banned.
Greenlight Marketing’s link network – has it been banned? http://www.notsonatural.co.uk
for the best car insurance results, what should the top 20 look like then?
i’d say,
1-3 conf / msm / GC
4-10 DL / Churchill / morethan / elephant / tesco / esure / admiral
11-13 CTM / Tesco Comp / U-swi
14+ budget / swiftcover / NU / Endsleigh / kwikfit
@catts mutts
Unfortunately you can’t strictly put a top ten together which is best for everyone or even a large proportion of searchers. You don’t know what risk profile they are, what is important for their cover and so on.
Putting a top ten together would be pre-empting the work which a comparison site does but they have the benefit of doing it for each individual customer based on 30+ entries and not one phrase.
More to the point, of the 14 or so brands you’ve mentioned there, it only comes to about 6 or so companies.
Just as notable as their removal/penalty from Google’s search listings, GoCompare are still not back in there – 2 weeks on.
They only appear to be showing up on a ‘web’ search for their domain. They’re not there for the ‘UK’ search, that’s even before they think about hitting the term ‘car insurance’ again.
Here is the Hitwise analysis of this story – the site certainly suffered after it was ‘blacklisted’:
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2008/02/google_blacklists_gocompare.html
ernest, i disagree and don’t quite understand your logic. maybe you can’t put a top 10 together for everyone, but you can get one that suits the masses.
people who search for car insurance are either looking for a way of getting a quote or are looking for their own insurance company for whatever reason. that’s why i think a top ten for car insurance should be made up of a mix of the best companies providing quotes (comparison sites) and the insurers with the largest policy bases.
the fact that lots of brands are underwritten by the same insurer is neither here nor there for joe public. you can’t tell me that most people with a direct line policy know or care that uki also insure those with churchill etc.
@Cutts Matt
Are you coming from an SEO background or an insurance background? I suspect SEO.
It’s simply not possible to put the top ten insurance companies in a list and expect that to cover nearly everyone in the market. The risks and variations for each insurance product are so diverse and the premiums vary so much.
With one particular broker I’ve tested recently, simply changing the person’s industry field made a difference to the quote of anything up to £70. Multiply that by 30 more variables (cross reference for differentiation across multiple providers) and you’ve got a picture of how complex it can get …hence the multi-million sector of aggregators. If a top ten list actually worked, they wouldn’t be in business!!
Add brand loyalty to that (the fact that customers actually seek out 3-4 names as an “authority” before they decide) and you’re left with a fairly narrow service.
Do you see where I’m coming from?
hahaha twats. isnt that site owned by some major car insurer anyway, yet it acts like it’s impartial, hahah nice Google!
Get your facts straight. Gocompare are not owned by a major car insurer. They have historically had a marketing loan from esure, which reportedly will only turn into shares if it cannot be repaid.
@Tech Blog, you’ve been absolutely owned by Aggie?!!! Strictly speaking you’re right of course Aggie. But a £30m bankrolling is a hell of a reliance on anyone! Still it gives HBOS a hand on another part of the market.
Where do you hail from Aggie? Your post came across with a fair amount of passion or frustration. Are you affiliated to either GC or Esure? No noises coming from GC for the last few months – used to get a decent contribution from Hayley and Kevin
Has anyone noticed an influx of links to the GoCompare powerseeker page? I think there’s something fishy going on here:
http://www.dezides.com/choosing-the-right-insurances/
http://www.mountaindispatch.com/save-money-on-your-financial-products/
http://www.just-discuss.com/go-compare-insurance-guides/
Tons more links on their way to the GoCompare powerseeker page:
mountaindispatch.com/save-money-on-your-financial-products/
xsquad.info/avoiding-a-major-insurance-problem/
goautorev.com/go-compare-your-insurances-today/
Does it take just one proven report to google to get blacklisted (-50 results)?
@Andy,
Defintely not. There’s a fairly complicated algorithm at work based on many factors including IMHO:
- History of spam reports
- Whether the site has been flagged as suspicious
- How many other reports have been filed against that domain
- Whether the site contains adult content
- [Insert variable here]
Only then is a site reviewed for the Big G Handjob. This can take between 2 days and infinity. Unless you can have a word with Matt or GoogleGuy.
Stumbled across this blog and thought I’d check google.co.uk results and see GoCompare on page 2. A pretty big climb I suppose since last post on this subject (March)
What’s this about a ban?
And this post http://www.insiders-view.co.uk/moneysupermarket-banned-by-google-for-spamming/0045
??
Me no see no bans on either of these, or moneyexpert, asdafinance, etc. ad nauseum!
Here’s my “idiotic” guess, people complain to G, G manually checks the site(s), G thinks “hey, they seem reputable” (as opposed to the cheap/spammy looking sites of the wannabes) and lets them slide.
A lot of these price comparison sites have little real content on them and are up there via links, it does not surprise me that most are paid for!
GoCompare Penalised by Google… Again
I haven’t had much of a look into this but I dont think this will be a full 3 month penalization like back in Jan. Will dig a bit deeper and have a good look at the backlink history and review in detail. Yet I think it is due to incorrect transition of the new site.
Go compare on page two google for car insurance?
Gocompare are indeed now on page 2. But this article was written on Jan 29th so it’s probably acceptable it’s a little out of date.
Perhaps we should close comments on old posts?
I wish someone would shoot that make believe opera singer who murders that go compare advert, he puts me and others right off the company.