13
2008
What happens if your site gets ‘blacklisted’ by Google?
What is the impact on a website of being ‘blacklisted’ by Google? Recently the insurance comparison website GoCompare.com faced precisely this dilemma after the search engine picked up on irregular inbound links to its site, causing it to plummet down the rankings.
We are currently seeing a seasonal peak in searches for ‘car insurance’, and the term has increased its share of searches by 31% since the week ending 29th December. Before it fell out with Google, this was good news for GoCompare as the comparison site had established itself as the top website within Google’s natural / organic listings for the term. However, since being ‘blacklisted’ it has dropped down the listings and, at the time of writing, is currently on the seventh page of listings – i.e. well outside of the top 10.
Looking at the data, during the week ending 26th January 2008 GoCompare was the number one site receiving traffic from the term ‘car insurance’, capturing 17.49% of the all search traffic from the term. In fact, the term was so important to GoCompare that it was the number one term sending traffic to the site, accounting for more traffic even than the branded term ‘go compare’. During the week ending 26 January 2008, one in six visits to the site came from the term.
The chart below shows traffic to GoCompare from the term ‘car insurance’ on the left axis, compared to overall searches for the term on the right axis. The area highlighted in red illustrates the impact on GoCompare after the blacklisting had taken effect (during week ending 2nd February).
GoCompare received only 2.31% of all search term traffic from the term ‘car insurance’ during the week ending 9th February, which is an 87% decrease from week ending 26th Jan when it held the #1 natural position on Google. However, as we see from this chart, searches for ‘car insurance’ remained constant during this period.
So what has the impact been on GoCompare’s competitors in the insurance price comparison sector? Confused.com and Comparethemarket.com have shown the largest increase in traffic from searches for ‘car insurance’ over the last two weeks. Traffic from the term to Confused.com has increased by 77% since the 26th January, while traffic to Comparethemarket.com has tripled over the same period.
Search engines are the most important source of traffic to finance price comparison websites, accounting for over a third of their upstream traffic. Ensuring that a website is well-optimised for search engines is vital in such a competitive industry, but this example illustrates the fine balance that needs to be achieved between effective SEO and breaking the ‘rules’.
Update: Follow up post on paid search here.
Update 2 (16 April 2008): Follow up post analysing the amount of time that it is taking GoCompare to recover from its Google ‘blacklisting’.
Wow – your stats tell an important story!
Is it worth taking the risk?
Only GoCompare will know how much business they will have lost, but i bet it made them sit up and take notice!
Thanks for sharing Robin!
I get everything about this story except for exactly why gocompare was blacklisted. The ‘search engine picked up on irregular inbound links to its site’ doesn’t help me understand exactly what caused google to blacklist them. I’d like to know ‘what not to do’ on my sites to avoid this cautionary tale. Can you point me in the right direction for that information? Thanks!
What Google Giveth it can take away – watch the results – HitWise
It may not be common knowledge yet, but all Know More Media's blogs, including this one, was hit by a Google Penalty (but it's not clear, exactly why) that impacted traffic quite a bit. While I love wearing my Google…
Hi Rick – Google tends not to comment on individual cases and is very protective about exactly how its rankings are generated.
For more info on this particular example there is some analysis and discussion here:
http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/gocompare-suffers-big-google-penalty/
For examples of similar issues, this might be useful:
http://googlespam.blogspot.com/2007/07/google-failing-to-combat-link-spam.html
Thanks, Robin
There is an SEO focused insurance blog that details why GoCompare got hit – basically lots of pay-per-blog posts.
http://www.insiders-view.co.uk/gocompare-banned-from-google/0096
Like the David ariey case, maybe talking to matt cutts might help …
Here is a list of Google’s rules for SEOs: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
Hitwise Shows Consequences of Being Banned by Google
Yesterday, Hitwise released a report about what happens when your site gets banned from Google’s index. Using charts and graphs, Hitwise illustrates how the market share of searches declined due to the company’s blacklisting, and how the competition mo…
Hitwise Illustrates How A Google Slap Can Hurt Hard
What happens if your site gets ‘blacklisted’ by Google? from Hitwise illustrates how dramatic a Google penalty can be to a company’s success. Hitwise collected search data and upstream traffic for searches for ‘car insurance.’ The search term saw a 31%…
Blacklisting is an extreme case compared to other minor violations. It will be in their best interest to hire a very good SEO (not because of their skills but because of their contacts) to help them get heard and find out how they can fix their issue and then get reconsidered for inclusion.
Thanks
Rajat
How much time do you reckon it will take until they’re back on top ?
GNC-2008-02-15 #348
Life of a Podcaster on the road at the bottom of the show notes see image. Info on Albuquerque meet up next Tuesday as well. Sponsors: Special Promotion code 20% off on 1 Year Shared Hosting Plans use Godaddy Code…
I’m not sure how long it will take to for them to move back to the top, but we’ll keep an eye on this and post the data when available.
Thanks, Robin
Traffic Consequences of Google Blacklist – SEO Gone Bad
Hitwise has released a blog post detailing the consequences of a google blacklist. The UK car insurance site gocompare.com was
Chart showing the demise of gocompare after it lost the #1 position for its top performing keyword in the UK search engine re…
Thats quite the SEO spanking!! I pray that one of our clients never has a similar issue!
What is meant by irregular traffic
Does your stats reveal what traffic was irregular
It may have been Google changing their algos and giving less priority to the backlinks that the site had received
I guess to make the money you have to perform natural links to your site.Organic search is harder and some look for the paid way out.
What is the best way to tell (if there is one) a reputable SEO company?
Is it just better to try learn it all yourself?
Paid links and paid blogging might be good shortterm strategies, but in the longterm, Google’s likely to catch ya!
Does someone knows how long it will take for them to come back at the top. Are they know in the Sandbox without the possibility to come back?
Marco
Google is in my experience having lots of problems with its duplicate content filter.
Do a search for the first words of your snippet including the quote marks – “Go Compare car insurance prices” – and see just how many people have copied the content on your pages.
Do the same search with your current meta description “go Compare cheap car insurance quotes” – many people have copied it.
Why did the screendump you quoted above show only the inner page http://www.gocompare.com/car-insurance/ and not the home page – its most likely because of sites that have copied your content, the words including several before and after your search phrase.
Note that your index page is not top for the opening paragraph on your site
“Our car insurance comparison service is completely free”
- and its your inner page that is ranking for it
And some more of what should be unique text:
“completely free. We don’t charge you a penny”
- that other sites have copied and are outranking you.
You also have the same intro text on many of your top pages. Page content that includes the first mention of search phrases should be more unique between pages. It becomes irrelevant that the remainder of the page is unique.
I have found that merely by changing the content of your meta description, and words on your page, that the next time Google cached your pages, you get back in the rankings. That is, until the next week when people have again copied your content, and your rankings steadily decrease to 500+ / not in top 1000. It is currently a never ending battle.
Hitwise Illustrates How A Google Slap Can Hurt Hard
What happens if your site gets ‘blacklisted’ by Google? from Hitwise illustrates how dramatic a Google penalty can be to a company’s success. Hitwise collected search data and upstream traffic for searches for ‘car insurance.’ The search term saw a 31%…
Does Google publish the list?
Hi שיווק באינטרנט,
I’m afraid that Google doesn’t publish any information about how or who it ‘blacklists’.
Thanks, Robin
duplication is one of the major causes of blacklisting, however in my job as an SEO i have seen that if u have to duplicate use pdf’s as google cannot blacklist u for duplication
“Thanks for the providing good information – this is really helpful for car insurance.I
Sure would be nice to know what they mean by irregular inbound links. I know backlinks are important but how do you ensure you do not get irregular links coming in?
Great article.
It makes me think how being reliant on any one company is a bad idea.
We dealt with a client that was blacklisted.
They ended up buying a new domain ,a fresh start.
Cool article, like it!
Very nice article, I like it