Mar
27
Are their recent ban on GoCompare.com (actually a +50 penalty) GoCompare.com are back in the Google SERPs for [car insurance]. They were given a penalty for what appeared to be very unsubtle blackhat link building. GoCompare used the PaidPosts technique to pay for inbound links on blogs across the internet.
After a stern beating from Google (the penalty lasted about 2months), they’re now back.
Mar
21
GoCompare Car Insurance Advert
Filed Under Marketing Insurance | 2 Comments
Sitting on my backside watching the tele on a bank holiday is never fun. What has made it slightly more pleasurable is seeing the new opening frame of the GoCompare car insurance advert. Has anyone else noticed this slight change?
Basically, the same old GoCompare car insurance ad is out there on all of your favourite cable channels but the first frame now shows a search box with the words GoCompare car insurance being typed in. Cunning, I thought. Perhaps that’s one of the few search phrases they’re now appearing in Google for following the GoCompare ban from Google’s listings.
So off I trundled to the computer to search for GoCompare car insurance to check the theory - and guess what I found. Nowt. Nudda. Nothing. GoCompare car insurance not even in sight of the listings. So they’ve been banned from Google, now they’ve updated their add to show customers a particular key phrase search under which GoCompare car insurance doesn’t appear!
No argument. No debate. And unfortunately no more graphs. Just thought I’d share that with someone.
Mar
20
BestDealInsurance and Bestdealinsurance.co.uk banned (penalised) from Google
Filed Under SEO | 36 Comments
We’re getting early reports that BestDealInsurance have fallen victim to another SEO penalty. They are still appearing for their domain name but have been dropped for many of their key terms in the Google results.
Hat Tip to Creased, one of our regulars here who left a comment
Bestdealinsurance.co.uk was launched in March 2003 and is dedicated to ensuring that not only do their customers get the best deal, but that they actually understand in full the terms and conditions of the product that they are buying.
As we can see from the graph below, their SEO campaign has focused on getting inbound links from a variety of sources. Their number of links has increased from unique sites so they are pushing for a few links across a large selection of the internet*.
* Just take a look at some of these linking sites:
BestDealInsurance IBLs
| Rank | Inbound Link Site |
|---|---|
| 1 | http://www.mycutelobster.co.uk |
| 2 | http://www.sirblogger.com |
| 3 | http://mybabybay.com |
| 4 | http://ravemails.com |
| 5 | http://gadgetsexpose.com |
| 6 | http://100tophomebiz.blogspot.com |
| 7 | http://www.ecgame.org |
| 8 | http://www.klubovefilmy.net |
| 9 | http://www.beautyfashions.net |
| 10 | http://www.indiaonvoip.com |
Now let’s look at the anchor text they have been going for (basically the terms for which they want the Google #1 position):
They have consistently been targeting house and home insurance (the terms for which they have been penalised), but they still remain #1 UK search for [life insurance]. Therfore unlike the gocompare ban, it has been a selective keyword penalisation.
Mar
8
Lloyds have launched their very own insurance comparison site at insurance.co.uk - that’s another aggregator with a major backer who is an insurance provider. Do you really think this is true:
insurance.co.uk is owned by Lloyds TSB Insurance Services Ltd. Although the site remains completely impartial and treats all the different insurers equally.
Hmmm.. On the face of it, it actually looks rather good.
Feb
22
Kwik Fit Insurance Banned by Google
Filed Under SEO | 17 Comments
Kwik Fit Insurance has been dropped by Google. For presumably shady tactics, the kwik-fit-insurance.com domain has been penalised by the search engine giant. We’ll update with more information when it becomes available.
Feb
13
Confused Million - Confused.com Million Pound Giveaway
Filed Under Insurance Aggregators, Marketing Insurance | 17 Comments
Confused have pulled the ultimate marketing stunt - £1,000,000 to one lucky winner. One million pounds is a lot of money - just to fill out a car insurance form. You actually get two chances to win (once for home insurance, once for car insurance) and the details you provide obviously have to be accurate.
A few interesting points in the Ts&Cs:
- You can obtain the winner’s name and county of residence by sending a stamped self-addressed envelope to us at Confused.com
- Entries submitted through agents or third parties or in bulk will be ineligible
- Employees/former employees … of Admiral Group Plc are not eligible to enter this prize draw.
- The winner may be required, on an unpaid basis, to attend press conferences and other promotional events
- The draw does not include motor or home insurance quotes made on other web sites that are powered by Confused.com.
- We may use the information you supply us with for letting you know about:
- Our newsletter
- New product launches
- Reminder about our service next year
- Future surveys/research
- Personalised price update information in time for the next renewal
- Contact by
- post
- telephone
- SMS
It’s still a cracking deal and I’m sure they’ll start marketing it properly soon - nothing on widespread media yet. That will sure test their systems and servers (and will likely take out many of the smaller brokers at the backend).
So, how can they afford this? Well, don’t forget, they’re owned by Admiral - no shortage there. What about the benefits to Confused:
- Cross-Sell to other/new products
- Re-Sale of leads to other parties such as CallConnection and LeadX
- Sale of customer data to third parties (e.g. high earners such as gambling sites, adult sites, loans, mortgages, credit cards)
- Customer Data for increased company worth
- Customer ownership (additional marketing clout to make sure they remain leaders in the car insurance market)
- Inbound links (this stunt is likely to increase ‘white-hat’ IBLs, no doubt encouraged by Neutralize)
- To crush one of their competitors, GoCompare, who have recently received a massive Google penalty
- As a sign of defiance to the latest FSA investigations
View the confused tv advert.
Feb
11
Say What Now Broker Boy?
Filed Under Marketing Insurance | 4 Comments
It’s fair to say that cultures have been shaped and changed by messages being passed down through generations, altered and embellished, resulting in something altogether …well, frankly unbelievable. In which case, I wonder what the generations to follow us will make of the marketing messages being used by the running scared brokers of today?
OK, so it’s not exactly on a par with religion but the distance between reality and truth is comparable. The bastard cousin of the comparison sector is that CompareTheMarket actually claim to compare the market - directly, implied or cleverly disguised - whilst only comparing three insurance companies when you dissolve the brands with some Cilit Bang and run them through a hot cycle. You would have thought the many regulatory big brothers who look over all of us might have done something about this by now? Not so. But they’re not the only ones. Click to continue
Jan
29
GoCompare Banned from Google
Filed Under Insurance Aggregators, SEO | 35 Comments
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.
Jan
5
Insurance Traffic Trends
Filed Under Marketing Insurance | 2 Comments
As an intro to a piece we are doing about insurance and the social side of the internet, I wanted to highlight a few areas where insurance companies are still stuck in the dark ages.
Trends - simple stuff. There are tons of resources that allow anyone to see what the market is doing. Yet few people are using this information to their advantage.
Insurance is well known to be seasonal. Depending on the product group, this could be due to winter/summer holidays, new car registration months or a surge in consumer spending amongst others. This time of year is popular amongst those who have eaten too much over Christmas! Just look at the guaranteed peaks at the beginning of the year for [gym] or [diet].
Are you part of the marketing team for a website? Are you changing your online spend as a result of this guaranteed information?
Useful Resources
Google Trends
Microsoft adCenter Labs
Demographics on Car Insurance Searches
Yahoo Top Trends and Buzz
BlogPulse (from Nielsen BuzzMetrics)
Car Insurance Trends on BlogPulse
IceRocket
Ice Rocket Home Insurance Trends
Omgili
Omgili Chatter on [credit cards] and [loans]
TheAA Insurance Premium Index
FeedCompare
What next?
We’re just scratching the surface here - there are plenty more nuggets out there. Care to suggest any for our avid readers (or would you rather keep it a secret)?
Trends appear not just on a large scale but on a smaller scale as well. Have you analysed your PPC/Marketing/CRM campaigns by hour of the day? You might find that the conversion is wildly different and therefore the spend should be different as well. If you’re a little sneaky, you may find that some Yahoo (Panama) keywords get accepted (when they are normally rejected) as the manual reviewers have gone home!
Don’t just look at the volume - take a look at the conversion. It’s no use getting a ton of paid traffic which doesn’t turn in to sales. Much of this will be old hat to most of you but everyone has to start somewhere…
Jan
2
GoCompare at Number 1 for Car Insurance
Filed Under SEO | 29 Comments
After a shaky (and some say, shady) start, GoCompare are now top of [car insurance] on Google. As you can see from the graph below, GoCompare have slowly made it. (Note this data is for the Google.com domain but the trends are similar). 
Have they done this using white-hat techniques? Hmmm. Let’s look at a few Google queries. Click to continue
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