BlogGalaxy
News and information from the heart of RedGalaxy UK - the web specialists
0
There’s been plenty of blogging going on in the last week - has Google penalised GoCompare again? Haven’t they?
It would seem really unlucky for Google to dish out yet another ban - a colleague of mine pointed out a day or two ago they’ve recently redesigned their main site.
I conducted a little research - they still rank #1 for their brand name “GoCompare”, however that famous search term “car insurance” sees them on page 2. Considering the severity of the penalty over a year ago, it’s looking more and more likely that the site redesign (and restructure) is actually the cause of the drop. Looks like my colleague could be right?
There’s certainly nothing about a penalty on Search Engine Land…
Stumble Upon
Del.icio.us
Buzz
Ever heard of black hat and/or white hat SEO? If not, I’ll give you a very brief introduction. SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the art of optimising your website to give it the best chance of ranking at the top of the likes of Google, Yahoo and MSN (Windows Live Search).
As with most things in life, there are right and wrong ways of performing SEO - the good ways are known as “white hat SEO” and the bad ways, “black hat SEO”. Paying for links to help your website’s link profile, for example, is one such bad way - sometimes you’ll be issued with a penalty such as the hefty one Google gave Go Compare last February.
It would appear that Danny Sullivan has given us a new hat to wear. Stop shouting the rainbow at your screen - it’s not a colour! The phrase “crap hat SEO” - yes crap - has been used by Danny:
“Search engines have ‘rules’ that they themselves knowingly allow others to break. Arguments erupt over the idea that any type of marketing is ‘manipulation.’ But at some point, enough is enough with some tactics. And today, I’m done. I’m calling bullshit on anyone who is link spamming or creating crappy nonsensical content sites.”
At Search Marketing Expo recently he went on to say “Just don’t be a ‘crap hat.’ Don’t do the crap stuff. Off-topic link drops, automated link insertions. It’s all just crap. Just say no to crap. And tell others to say no. Make it like racist jokes, don’t put up with it. Enough crappy MP3 sites, comment spamming, god knows what else. Just enough. Be leaders. Grow up and if it’s money you’re leaving on the table, leave it.”
So there you have it. New hat for the selection. White, black, or crap - you choose!
Last week I received an email from Robin Goad at Hitwise, updating me on the car insurance aggregator website GoCompare.com I wrote about here. GoCompare tried to cheat the search engines by buying links on other websites, a “black-hat” method of search engine optimisation. Unfortunately for them, Google picked up on this and gave them a ranking penalty, dropping them over 60 positions for the search term “car insurance”, and even blacklisting them for their own brand name!
Robin talks about the recovery process for GoCompare and graphs the paid and organic traffic comparisons before and after the penalty was imposed; not surprisingly GoCompare catered for their loss in organic search traffic by increasing their PPC (pay per click) campaign bids - something which will seriously impact their marketing budget.
Some people commented on Robin’s post, suggesting they took 6 months to recover from similar penalties, which certainly suggests GoCompare have a long drive ahead of them!
If you have a website and need to improve your chance of ranking higher on the search engines, don’t incur penalties - contact our SEO specialists and see what we can do for you.
Penalties are issued by Google for numerous reasons - link spamming, buying and selling, “black hat SEO” (or “spamdexing“), duplicate content, keyword spamming - they’re all violations of Google’s terms of service and can result in a pagerank penalty, listing drop, or even complete removal of your listings from the engine’s database.
GoCompare found out recently that it also hurts to openly buy blog posts and reviews on other websites. Having held the #1 spot on Google for “car insurance”, they dropped down below position 60 after Google issued a penalty on them for, seemingly, sponsored posts. To indicate the severity of the penalty, Hitwise seems to think GoCompare received an 87% drop in search term traffic after being banned for the term “car insurance”. Obviously other companies will benefit from such a penalty; while an 87% drop in traffic from the term wasn’t enough for the comparison site to comprehend, Hitwise also states in the same blog post that Compare.com, one of the comparison site competitors, found that traffic from the same search term increased by 77%.
What Google are doing is proving a point. It’s in the best interests of website owners to think before they buy themselves into the top spots. In GoCompare’s case, it might have been better for them to request a guest spot, or contributed articles to websites.
Back to top