GoCompare.com incurs Google's wrath

15th February 2008

Getting on the wrong side of Google has cost one car insurance comparison site dearly, Hitwise observes.

On his blog, the web traffic monitoring service's Robin Goad discusses the search giant's 'blacklisting' of GoCompare.com, which has seen its ranking for the term 'car insurance' plummet from number one to page seven of search results.

Goad notes that, before the penalty was issued, 'car insurance' was the top term sending traffic to GoCompare.com, representing one in six visits - more than the firm's own brand name.

Statistics for the week ending February 9th saw an 87 per cent decrease in the phrase's success for the site, with 'car insurance' yielding 2.31 per cent of the resource's traffic.

According to E-consultancy, the price comparison site appears to have been punished for the purchase of paid links - although Google has declined to comment on the situation.

Page one of the Google search for 'car insurance' currently features a number of price comparison websites including moneysupermarket.com and Confused.com.