19 Comments so far

1. PPCblogger on October 29, 2008 4:11 pm

   Heard the rumour. Naughty naughty.

   It’s not a site wide thing, some big terms have been nuked but they still rank for some other very competitive terms/brand.

2. Tron on October 29, 2008 4:41 pm

   This is a strange one - still hold top position for a number of terms; “Loans” for example.

   In other areas Money Extra have come from nowhere; “Credit Cards” for example, with 2mmm links. Is there something going on with MoneyExtra and MoneyExpert? ;o)

3. Henry on October 29, 2008 7:26 pm

   They still seem to be doing well on most of the other terms that I moniter. We will have to see how it pans out.

   I reckon a couple of months in the wilderness for a couple of terms and then back in the top ten after a few of there backlinks have been devalued.

   Is anyone that it is a penalty.

4. Paul on October 30, 2008 2:20 pm

   They’ve gone to 60ish for ‘car insurance’ to from around position 5 last week.

   Perhaps a few of their digital point sites were nuked, affecting a few million of their back-links.

   Alternatively, it could be down to some of the

   @Tron - As you know MoneyExtra use exactly the same black hat SEO link building (spamming) techniques as MoneyExpert - so we know it’s nothing to do with Digital Point not working anymore (unfortunately).

   Could be the cloaking they had on the insurance page - not sure if they did this on credit cards too, but they definitely had some sneaky redirects going on when you clicked through from the Google SERPs.

5. PPCblogger on October 30, 2008 3:39 pm

   Yeh they were redirecting based on refferer on the higher level insurance page to the car insurance landing page.

   Around 10 sites I know using the DP network still rank fine. So, it’s certainly not network wide.

   Might be just some sites in the network being taken out as Paul mentions. You’d think if it was a manual penalisation specifically of the site it would be for more/all of the site.

6. Harry on October 30, 2008 11:16 pm

   Sounds like the usual story - the Big G is trying to scare the link buyers without actually affecting their SERPs too drastically.

   If they did a network wide nuke of DP or de-listed all those who bought links, they’d be huge PR, loss in trust of the SERPs and no brand name delivered to the results page for customers to interact with.

   Money Expert will be back in a few weeks, maybe with a slight penalty.

7. Baby Clothing on October 31, 2008 4:39 pm

   It’s about time Google started penalising some of these big site for using techniques that are not complying with “google guidelines”. I realise in many cases it can be difficult to determine which links are paid for and which are not, but something needs to be done because it is strictly against Google guidelines…

   http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3

8. Teddy on November 1, 2008 11:30 pm

   It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or when the doer of deeds could of done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly….who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst if he fails whilst daring greatly - so that his place shall never be with those cold and TIMID souls who know neither victory or defeat.

9. Paul on November 3, 2008 10:24 am

   Well said.

   “White-hat Optimisation” is an oxymoron.

10. Lee on November 3, 2008 7:48 pm

    Anyone notice that GoCompare has also dropped for “car insurance” to page 4?

    BTW, any recommendations for seo companies which could help get a penalty removed, where even a search for the company name is on page 4?

11. insurance blogger on November 14, 2008 1:38 pm

    Hi,
    nice article - interesting comments.

    As someone who used to dominate the search term ‘car insurance’ (four years ago) on all the top three SE’s by linking (not link spam as every link was from a site on theme) and buying links etc and who RM at moneysupermarket and all the others that copied me…..until I overcooked it on google and got ‘nuked’ …..

    I’d like to point out that:
    Yes there is no such thing as ‘white hat’.

    When you get so big it doesn’t matter what you do you won’t ever get nuked if you get backlinks from authority sites like the BBc, telegraph, times etc etc..

    long live the blackhatcats

12. Henry on November 17, 2008 3:03 pm

    Looks like they are back.

    That didn’t last long.

13. Harry on November 17, 2008 5:05 pm

    But they’ve disappeared for [car insurance]!!

14. Peter on November 17, 2008 5:45 pm

    Hi,

    Great site guys, love reading your posts, even if they have dried up recently!

    Anyone have recommendations for uk seo companies which can help rank for competitive terms? Is there anything i should be looking to ask when choosing one?

    Keep up the great work!

15. Henry on November 19, 2008 3:38 pm

    @peter

    If I was you I would ask if they can rank you and what level of risk that would entail. It is important that they are upfront about the fact that if you want to get ranked in competitive industries quickly then it will entail some level of risk.

    henry

16. Peter on November 20, 2008 6:08 pm

    Thanks for that Henry. What do you mean by risk? Could they get the site banned?

17. George on November 21, 2008 12:03 am

    @Peter, they could definitely get the site banned (here’s looking at you Latitude), penalised (ahem Tamar), link ring exposed (MoneyExpert are still hanging on) or worse - bad PR when right now it’s important that your customers trust you.

18. clive on December 3, 2008 12:13 pm

    On the subject of SEO - who does reducemyquote.com - is it Tamar or someone else.

    They obviously think links on dating and drug sites is a good move:

    http://online-encounters.com/
    http://www.pillspilot.com/

19. George on December 4, 2008 10:15 am

    @clive, reducemyquote is all under the Endsleigh brand.