Google is to shut down Google Compare, its financial comparison service, from March23

[Dr Harnak Rayat]

What are the facts behind these interesting news from and others.........

https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/02/23/google-to-close-its-insurance-comparison-service/


Google is to shut down Google Compare, its financial comparison service, from 23 March 2016
The service will be closed in both the UK and US.

On the face of it, the news will have competitor comparison sites jumping for joy, as Google Compare constituted a major threat to their own business models.

When Google introduced the service, there was plenty of concern from existing players in the market that it was a conflict of interest.

This was understandable, given the prominence Google affords it in some very high value searches.

Google compare serps

According to a letter obtained by Search Engine Land, Google told Compare Partners that “the Google Compare service itself hasn’t driven the success we hoped for.”

In addition:

“…we’ve decided that focusing more intently on AdWords and future innovations will enable us to provide fresh, comprehensive answers to Google users, and to provide our financial services partners with the best return on investment.”
I asked Digital Consultant Carl Hendy for his thoughts on the news:

Why do you think Google is closing Compare?

Its a little too early to know why they shut down Google Compare and we shall probably never find the real reason why.

It would be nice to think that Google decided that it was unfair to favour its own products in the search results and pressure of ‘unfair advantage’ from various country governments resulted in Google backing down.

However the cynic in me and the coincidental timing of the new Four Adwords listings for commercial queries makes me believe that Google will financially be better off whilst at the same time keeping those large financial and travel Adwords spenders happy.

Will other insurance sites/competitors be opening the champagne today? Or will Google have other plans?

I wouldn’t open the champagne too soon. Google has a habit of misdirecting everyone.

It has collected vast amounts of data through these compare tools and I can’t see Google not monetising that data.

Everyone celebrated when Google penalised the acquisition of BeatThatQuote (a site which does not exist anymore) only for Google to then release its own comparison tools fairly soon afterwards.

In summary

The news will be welcome for some, in the short-term at least. For one thing, we may see a little more of the organic results in this vertical.

However, I imagine that Google has only made this move as it believes more can be made through ads than its own comparison service. It also avoids any scrutiny over unfair competition.

 

[Edwin]

I think this is tied in with Google getting rid of Adwords in the right hand sidebar in favour of ads above/below SERPS only.

They have access to such gargantuan amounts of data that they've probably calculated they can get more by getting advertisers fighting much harder for a smaller number of slots ie increasing ad scarcity.

I'm sure there are tons of firms who have little/no clue about how to drive organic traffic and have become addicted to the quick traffic fix offered by Adwords. Now, if they want to keep getting that traffic (and therefore those customers) they're going to have to bid much much higher to fill one of the much smaller number of slots...

 

[RobM]

You know what really pisses me off? Going to a search engine and it tries to come up with results based on what I'm looking for. Thankfully google takes that decision away from me and is kind enough to show me whoever is paying the highest amount - so that must be more correct yeah? It's so nice not having to click on more than 2 results to find the most appropriate thing that G gives me. It's just a shame that the interwebz are soooo big and google can't serve me everything I'm looking for. To make sure it's at least the best I gave them my name, credit card, address, mother's maiden name, shoe size, blood group, etc and now using google chrome I guess at least they can remove a lot of that clutter that just gets in my way.

 

[dazc]

The news will be welcome for some, in the short-term at least. For one thing, we may see a little more of the organic results in this vertical.

Looking at some results on a laptop I don't see any organic results unless I scroll down below the fold.

As said above, raising adwords revenue is an easier route.

Comments on Hacker News:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11157826

 

[martin-s]

There is now a lot of white space on the right hand side of the search results. Too much from a design perspective.

Is this going to herald display ads appearing? Is there another plan for the space? If not, you could see Google reverting this.

In the meantime, SEO just became a lot less important for commercial intent queries, as Adwords dominate the first 4 results.

 

[Edwin]

There is now a lot of white space on the right hand side of the search results. Too much from a design perspective.

Is this going to herald display ads appearing? Is there another plan for the space? If not, you could see Google reverting this.

In the meantime, SEO just became a lot less important for commercial intent queries, as Adwords dominate the first 4 results.

I'd say it's the opposite: SEO just became a lot more important, because there are far fewer Adwords slots on the page to fight over. For competitive terms, there will be many more than 4 firms wanting to get their ads in front of searchers so the bids will go up, up, up.

But if you substitute "harder" for "less important" you're probably right. In fact, everything just became harder: on the SEO front you really need to land in the top couple of positions to get any useful traffic, and on the Adwords front as above.

Notice too that Google has blocks for "Twitter" content and for "News" for a lot of queries, leaving only 8 real organic search slots not 10. See for example "travel insurance" or "life insurance" for a live example of this.

So you've got:
4 ads
8 organic SERPS + 1 Twitter and 1 news slot
3 ads
for a total of 17 first page links fighting for clicks.

I imagine the % of people clicking through to pages 2 and deeper into the search results will drop even lower than it is now.

 

[philiporchard]

Out of interest, when did G get rid of adverts in the side panel?

 

[Edwin]

Out of interest, when did G get rid of adverts in the side panel?

February 19th
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-removes-right-hand-sidebar-ads/156912/

 

[philiporchard]

Ah - wondered why my Adwords account manager was banging down my door first thing on Monday morning!

 

[Edwin]

Ah - wondered why my Adwords account manager was banging down my door first thing on Monday morning!

Trying to get you to raise your bids?

 

[ian]

Can someone give me some guidance because I'm so far out of touch with Google Adwords, that I'm unsure what I'm paying for. My retail company has always used Adwords, and I'm still being charged a similar amount per month for ads, yet despite them being eligible, when I search for any of the keywords, no ads now appear on the results page, or if they do, they appear at the bottom, not the top or right hand side. What am I paying for exactly if they don't appear and I don't have them showing on third party sites? Fortunately product searches tend to have me at the top anyway, so I'm wondering if I should just drop Adwords, or is it in a way giving me an organic boost just paying them each month?

 

[philiporchard]

If you are being charged, then they must be generating leads.

Worth taking a bit of time to look at the keywords you are bidding on and seeing which keywords are converting the most.

You'll probably find you'll want to tighten up which keywords are the best for your business, and ignore those that are just costing you money and are not relevant.

 

[ian]

Indeed, trawling through at the moment and must say it is a horrible system to use. Not one ad is showing when I do a test, yet some are showing as active, others as low quality score of 10/10!!!!! Don't like having to decide upon broad search, specific, exact etc etc. What I have noticed however is that on low profit margin products, what was once a £0.12 CPC is now £0.35 or in some cases £0.50 despite no other ads showing - Google appear to be pricing themselves out of the market for small retailers.

 

[martin-s]

Don't you believe it. Depending on the market, you can get clicks for £0.02 on average if you know what you're doing.

Google's "first page bids" aren't exactly completely honest.

If your ad performance is poor, that's when your costs go up.

 

[boxfish]

Indeed, trawling through at the moment and must say it is a horrible system to use. Not one ad is showing when I do a test, yet some are showing as active, others as low quality score of 10/10!!!!! Don't like having to decide upon broad search, specific, exact etc etc. What I have noticed however is that on low profit margin products, what was once a £0.12 CPC is now £0.35 or in some cases £0.50 despite no other ads showing - Google appear to be pricing themselves out of the market for small retailers.

Why don't you like to choose between Broad, Phrase and Exact match?

 

[dazc]

There is now a lot of white space on the right hand side of the search results. Too much from a design perspective.

Is this going to herald display ads appearing? Is there another plan for the space? If not, you could see Google reverting this.

In the meantime, SEO just became a lot less important for commercial intent queries, as Adwords dominate the first 4 results.

The change mostly affects retail searches where you'll see a large google shopping section.

 

[philiporchard]

Maybe now is the time to go for it Harnak!

 

[martin-s]

Maybe now is the time to go for it Harnak!

Could well be a boost for EMDs used in conjunction with Adwords for sure.

 

[Dr Harnak Rayat]

Interesting

It will interesting to see how this one plays out. Only time will tell. It would be great if the result is to have the balance swing back to strengthen the market.

I am of the opinion that The BIG G had notices that their G comparison engine was actually killing of the the revenue stream from big comparison sites and the revenue from the comparison engine not being as fruitful as the may have expected.

MMMM......

 

[Systreg]

I'd have been none the wiser if not for this topic, I noticed yesterday that there were no adverts down the right of the page, and assumed it must just be a case of there not being many advertisers for whatever term I searched for.