Full Story
I don't agree with what GoCompare did to up their rank, but maybe that is just because I am not in the extremely competitive insurance space. The bigger question for me is why this one site was singled out and how Google made this determination. If having bought links pointing at your site can get you penalized then what is to stop a competitor from buying links to your site in order to hurt your rank -- maybe there is more to the story than I know. Check out the other coverage below and let me know what you think.
Other Coverage:
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/02/this-is-what-ha.html
http://www.insurancetimes.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=369464&c=2
http://searchengineland.com/080214-084542.php
5 comments:
Google is God. Or they seem to have the powers of God according to the articles. And they seem to have used their wrath against any wrong doers who try to manipulate their system. If GoCompare did in fact use paid links to get their number one spot, then they do deserve their punishment from Google. However, no one seems to be answering the question of why they got dropped by Google. If Google has some malicious plot against them for selfish reasons, they could drop them just because they said so. And that is the scary part of having so much power.
Buying links? This is a practice I hadn't heard of before.
The articles didn't make it very clear what buying links entails. I'm assuming this means the company paid someone to create a web site on another domain with links to their company?
Im sure there are tons of companies doing this same thing. I dont know how Google could ever track all of them. Any system a search engine puts in place is bound to be flawed in some way. There is always a way to get around the loopholes and get what you want. Does this mean that I think it was ok what GoCompare did, NO, but my point is that there are TONS more people who are doing this same thing to work themselves up in the ranks.
I think Google was just making an example of GoCompare and letting the public know that they will not stand for what may be seen as unfair advertising techniques. I agree with Jamie on the fact that there are surely numerous companies doing the same thing, this one was just caught and made an example of. Google can become the biggest thing in the world and they will still have little known flaws that people and companies can exploit to their advantage. I think what GoCompare did was unfair and leaves little competition for the smaller companies if this becomes larger. The Google system shows results based on popularity and buying up sites for one company is just plain dishonest and wrong.
Thanks for the comments guys. The scary part to me is that companies could use this to damage competitors. I would never do this of course, but if I knew Google punished sites for paid links then I could go out tomorrow and buy links for my competitors sites in order to drop them out of the ranks. Sure it might cost some money, but I'm sure it would be worth it for some people to knock out a competitor
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