Apr
2
Money Expert Spam Their Way to 1st Page of Google
Filed Under SEO |
Some may be surprised, some may not. But following our debates about the risks and rewards of buying links and spamming the search engines, Money Expert have rocketed onto the first results page of Google for the term car insurance.
Regardless of which colour hat you wear, you can’t help but be amazed at the speed with which they have returned this high result in Google. This afternoon, we’ve seen them at positions 3 and 10 - depending on the direction of the wind - from absolutely nowhere (which in SEO terms is beyond the top 3 positions or pages).
We all know that Money Expert have been buying links. They know it. You know it. Google even knows it. And while we wait for the day to come when Google manages to automate the penalisation of link buying, there may be a few other tricks we should be keeping an eye on.
Look at the page URL from the search engine result below. It is suggesting that they’re sending you to www.moneyexpert.com/Insurance/Home.aspx. If you were to copy and paste this URL into your browser, that’s exactly where you end up. However, if you click on the Google results, you end up here: http://www.moneyexpert.com/Insurance/Google/home.aspx which produces a different page altogether. Serving different content to the search engine and the customer. Naughty, naughty.
They’ve been doing this on their mortgages and loans key phrases for a little while. Basically, if you disable cookies you get a 302 redirecting to itself. Money Expert are looking for the referrer to include a particular key phrase in ”q=car+insurance” for example and redirect the customer. It appears that this way, they can focus all their link juice through to one page and climb the rankings for multiple keywords.
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Nice to see the blog still has a strong SEO theme Ernest!
So, MoneyExpert third for car insurance eh? Impressive, but from what I’ve read on here and other blogs they seem to be making fools of the big G right now. Bullet proof or not? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
If you’d allow I’d like to dare to divert the discussion away from SEO and talk about the quality of car insurance comparison sites.
Who do you think is the best, Confused, MoneySupermarket, Gocompare or someone else? We’re running a poll over on the blog if you fancy dropping by to cast a vote (see my name for link).
OK, back to MoneyExpert, from what I’ve read Google can’t get near them for finance keywords but there’s been some big penalties on car insurance, Gocompare etc. So I think they might get knocked down after a couple of months (not soon enough to stop them making a nice profit before hand though I bet!)
Good on em I say…
SO what they are buying links….
So do MOST of us.
s far as the redirect, well spotted; to be fair its a page for a car insurance quote, which is what the customer is searching for.
So not quite that naughty.
Using Confused as their engine i note.
They were on the smae page as me yesterday, so yes that was quick.
I see them in 4th not 3rd mind you.
Anyway, good on them.
I salute you MoneyExperts.com
Let the people bitch while you cream it!!
@Rex
Out of interest, would you consider signing yourself up for the DP network….
Hi Clive; I tried it last year as an experiment on a clients secondary site.
It went really, really well for about a month then BOOM. I got a Go Compare style penalty.
I was only hitting long tail (3 or more keywords) and to be fair they were the only links I used on it, so maybe thats why.
Oh and the site was not that great with regards to content either.
I’ve learnt since then.
I do buy links; but I go for quality. And i get results.
I tend to stick long tail, so its a bit easier.
All the big boys have much better spending power for links.
The current top 6 all buy links (as i have sold plenty to them!)so it does makes me laugh when someone beats them and they bitch.
@Daniel - that’s for another post I think but definitely a discussion worth having. You’re right about Money Expert, they’re making a fool out of the Big G - for now.
@Rex - I didn’t expect anything else from yourself. You’re marching on with your buy links bandwagon. Fair enough. But we’ve already covered this so I won’t bother taking that one any further.
“not that naughty” - they’re overloading their inbound (artificial) link weight into one page and then directly customers to another. That’s outright and obvious spamming.
…and you still haven’t spoken of a contingency plan for when the Big G catches up with Money Expert, GoCompare, MSM etc. I suspect you’re not tech-savvy?! Just a hunch.
hi Ernie,
not that tech savvy!
thanks!
i hold my own ta!!
Anyway back to your not that naughty drama.
I use cloaking legitmately for lost of sites and never been punished for it.
Customer searchs for car insurance.
Customer finds car insurance.
Mountain/molehill?
hey gotta go real drama….”the aprentice” is starting!!
@Rex - the Apprentice?! Honestly?! Most of those guys haven’t got much more than a handful of GCSEs to rub together. I’m still waiting for a response by the way? …when you can pull yourself away from the tele for long enough.
You missed a good one Ernie…
you are right though…no GCSE’s between them…including the Multi Millionaire thicky Alan Sugar!!
“…and you still haven’t spoken of a contingency plan for when the Big G catches up with Money Expert, GoCompare, MSM etc.”
Well I see all the three above on TV, ppc ALOT, various PR stories in all the papers.
They are big budget. SEO will only be a part of their business; not all of it.
So if and when they get hit, because lets face it we ALL go up and down; they’ll live.
They will get back in the mix.
(hope thats the right question mate!)
@Rex - to be honest, I was after an answer to what you’d do about your SEO strategy in order to return to some sort of notable ranking (if not a restoration to former glory). Not an alternative method of bringing in customers.
@Rex
You’re right, SEO isn’t all their business, but I bet it makes up a fair chunk of their profit!!!
Do you think they make much from PPC & TV at those prices and PR ain’t free.
If SEO wasn’t that important, they wouldn’t bother paying the likes of Tamar an arm & a leg to do it.
By the way, you might as well just tell us what site it is you SEO, you’ve given us a fair few clues!!
Also - for information - it looks like some rich guy has bought moneyexpert last year and got £25m of VC money from the states this year.
Wonder if all those boys realise their SEO stragety (and are large chunk of profit I bet) is on a knife edge………..
Clive… tell you who I seo?…ummm….pm me…ill show you mine if you show me yours?
I think any of us who buy links (is that you Clive?) live on a knife edge to a certain degree; as we know its against the rules.
Anyone who sits top of major terms; they even more so; whether they buy links or not.
I enjoy this blog as it makes me think that whoever goes top by whatever means, will always attract criticism.
I want to applaud those who do well in our industry; try and learn from it, understand elements of what works and what doesnt.
Untill they beat me and then they are spamming twats and i will bitch like hell to anyone that listens ; 0 )
@Rex - was worth a try, thought you might of been on the doubles tonight whilst watching the apprentice!!!
@Clive - you need more than a few doubles to get you through the apprentice!
@Rex - is an answer to my question a possibility?
Yes sorry Ernie,
What would i do if i took a hit.
Well, I buy quality links. If i got hit I would have to assume thats why.
SO i guess i would remove said links, and email a reinclusion email and pray.
Though i have an SEO mate working in the travel industry and he took a hit (same strategy as me….buying in quality, relevent links) and he did the above and it took 5 months to even find his URL from the index.
I showed him Go Compare and he was as baffled as me.
But then having said that not a big budget job. No TV, no serious pr, light ppc. Not really a brand par se.
So i would be interested in some posts about my neck of the woods….long tail.
We compete with other large brands on the high converting, long tail SEO.
Be interesting what other terms people rate?
MoneyExpert have shot up insanely fast, only 1 or 2 weeks ago they were on page 3 for car insurance, then BOOM! upto page 1. DP sure does work!
I know that Google may catch on and give a penalisation as a “punishment” however a few month penalty isn’t much of a deterent. So why not go for DP? Didn’t someone on here say “a day as a lion or lifetime as a sheep”?.
We’ve learned from GoCompare, Confused, MoneySupermarket and the like that WHEN you do get reincluded you won’t be far away from the previous high ranking position that DP got you in the first place.
Seriously, Google need to toughen up if they’re going to hand out penalties, otherwise it’s just open range - and those with the most money can just spam their way to the top. Actually, those in the top 20 have just spammed their way to the top!
@Rex - so no strategy at all then Rex?!
Google have already gone after DP - sites with the links on them have had page rank removed and been delisted from Google.
Apparently ME have been getting their SEO company to build hundreds of websites on a daily basis specifically to build up the amount of weight that they need to maintain a huge number of links which keeps them ahead of the bans.
What’s strange is that there must have been dozens of spam reports filed about their site, and the issue of them having so many back links has been discussed publicly already.
Does anyone know who has the Money Expert SEO contract? I heard that it was Latitude, but I have also heard that there is a chap by the name of Careless who looks after that side, and is also a shareholder in the company and also Money Net, who employ similar tactics.
Will be interesting to see what line is adopted now they have acquired Simply Switch.
Have to say that I am with Rex to a degree. Make hay while the sun shines, but I am pretty certain it is not the way to build a solid business empire.
@Tron - good to see you back …been lurking for a bit?! I believe Money Expert used to be with Latitude (no secret there) but I think they’re doing things in-house nowadays.
As for the Careless chap, I’ve no idea. But with a name like that and a shareholding, I’d be looking at the long term impact on any SEO strategy. Depends on the company philosophy I suppose.
@Karen
So there is a serious punishment handed out by Google? Am I right in understanding that it effects only the sites hosting the ads?
So therefore I could effectively create a site with DP ads at site “X”, yet have DP publish ads pointing to site “Y”. And only site “X” would be effected?
(Sorry for going off-topic here - but I’m curious about DP network, I know a lot of people claim it’s worked for them so I’d just like to see how I could capitalise on that)
@Ernest - I’m never far away.
Managing in house makes sense. It might explain Mr Careless’ involvement, which is originates from an SEO arrangement, or so I have been told.
Truth be known, I get told a lot of things though, rarely are they all that accurate. As I said, let’s keep an eye out for movement from Simply Switch now they are part of the ME group.
I agree that company philosophy is prone to be varied, but as Clive said, this is a company that has just secured £25m of VC funding. That would suggest they are playing the long term game to me. The ATL activity/TV, albeit on a limited scale, would support this.
@David B,
Yes your summary is pretty much on the money.
There are a couple of very important additional points though.
1. Not all DP carrying sites have been identified and discounted.
2. It has been known for site Y to also be penalised. How and where such penalties are applied/implemented seems to be anyone’s guess.
WOW… um, lets go and make a few hundred automated junk domains with DP ads - then direct junk traffic at it. Which costs something like £300 for 100,000 hits.
I’m guessing that would do the trick?
Or did I just give away someones SEO tactic?
@David B
The thinking behind punishing the sites serving the ads rather than the ones that the ads are for is to protect legitimate webmasters. Otherwise, you would be able to point a stack of links at a competitor through DP and then report them for spamming.
ME will get away with this tactic for a while yet.
“ME will get away with this tactic for a while yet.”
What’s your guess Karen? How long do you think they’ve got?
Has anyone noticed that GoCompare seem to have slipped to page 2?
Also, Money Expert seem to have dropped the Confused.com affiliation for car insurance and gone with a CDL powered form - I guess there’s more profits in doing that.
My bad, they seem to have switched back to Confused… I’m guessing the brokers they have can’t compete with Confused.
@ Ernest
How long Money Expert last at the top is probably inversely proportional to the number of spam reports that get filed by their competitors over the next couple of weeks.
A month?
Just spotted another willing to have a go with this tactic.
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/CARS/insurance/car_insurance_centre.jsp
You have to ask what signals are google sending out…
@clive
I had a quick look, it seems the listing in google returns the same as the URL you provided. Not sure if I am looking at the right thing, but I can’t see this as the same thing though.
@ritz
sorry, should have been clearer - I mean’t the DP network, they are using the DP network.
Well they must be more worried about chasing down guys trying to make living doing things the right way:
http://www.jaankanellis.com/widget-baiting-gone-bad/
Food for thought: It also be a case of paid Organic Rankings in Google (thought it is still hidden), like what yahoo does.
Chances are there Google is charging them for CPC basis. And for tracking purpose Moneyexpert.com making user land on URL with Google word in it.
Let me have your views on this
Tesco pwns Google.
[...] about Google penalizing legitimate sites for various marginal or wrong reasons. Yet, there are miraculous stories like this one about an insurance site not only running black hat tactics under the nose of Google, [...]
You’re completely wrong here:
“If you were to copy and paste this URL into your browser, that’s exactly where you end up. However, if you click on the Google results, you end up here: moneyexpert/Insurance/Google/home.aspx which produces a different page altogether. Serving different content to the search engine and the customer.”
This was _NOT_ the different version for a search engine, but for the _user_coming_from_search_engine_, depending on http referrer value.
It makes a difference, right?
There is no different version for search engine and normal user - you said that with no referrer you get the same page as search engines do.
Writing ‘You’, I mean ‘You, Insiders View’ of course
@Szymon Nitka - if you read above, it explains that the customer and the search engine are being served different content.
The customer coming from Google is shown the URL that the GoogleBot crawled. But when customers click on the result in the SERPs, this is not the landing page they’re given (presumably ME are using the referrer string to do this).
I’m seeing them at no 2 for “car insurance”, i’d fully expect to see them at no 1 within days - unless google pulls the trigger!
I see MoneyExpert.com at #1 in Google for ‘car insurance’!
Have they no shame? Surely someone at the Big G must now take action?
MoneyExpert are mocking Google and for over a year now nothing has happened.
Google is a joke.
Yes - as predicted yesterday by my good self.
Ernest/George - does this not deserve another thread now with the title something like “Moneyexpert spam their way to no 1 for car insurance”?
@Clive - if we thought it would add anything of uncover any more insights. Unfortunately, I suspect it’ll be more of the same above.
Until Google sorts out the page cloaking AND link buying, we’re powerless to do anything other than submit spam reports every now and again.
If everyone submits a spam report Google will take notice.
Just one or two spam reports now and again won’t do a thing, everyone needs to submit at around the same time.
I’ve submitted mine, and got all my cronies onto it too.
P.S: Spam reports and Google do work - I’ve seen them work and even been the victim of them.
Does anybody know what link network they are using?
That makes me wanna buy links, too.
See moneyexpert are losing their top positions for credit cards, loans, mortgages and car insurance…
Looks like Google has finally got around to sorting them!
Just looking at backlinks on yahoo and moneyexperts car insurance page is showing 6 million backlinks………. wow
Like Si Williams said above, I think google are trying to fight this, i’ve seen a few prolific dp network spammers suffer in recent weeks, three.co.uk for mobile phones, flightfind.co.uk for cheap flights etc.
Thisismoney.co.uk for loans and obviously moneyexpert are bouncing around for their terms.
I think the clock is ticking.
One more thing, what added value are moneyexpert bringing to the table with a white-labled version of confused.com?
They’ve tried to disguise this by creating a kind of dummy 1st data capture screen for new quotes, but a couple clicks down the line and you end up on the confused.com domain.