Comments on: GoCompare penalised again

By: marketingmotormouth

marketingmotormouth — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:41:49 +0000

apologies for the lighthearted approach – perhaps they new what TV advertising campaign was coming?

By: Content For Links & Go Compare

Content For Links & Go Compare — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:56:01 +0000

[...] to Determine a Search Engine Penalty – Jonathan Stewart Go Compare Penalized Again – Patrick Altoft The Content For Links Debate – Linktank Content For Links – Kieron Donoghue Link [...]

By: How to Determine a Search Engine Penalty | S.e.A.rCh

How to Determine a Search Engine Penalty | S.e.A.rCh — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:24:44 +0000

[...] with talk of a GoCompare penalty last week. I didn’t think it was a penalty, and posted my thoughts over at Patrick Altoft’s SEO blog. Here I’m going to talk a little more about why I [...]

By: The man in the middle

The man in the middle — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:11:20 +0000

Their website is crap anyway, bring on the Meerkat boys

By: Diane

Diane — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:34:51 +0000

I get dozens of emails every week asking me to place an article on my sites with a link in because it’ll do my site good. Well I don’t bother replying to them as 99% of them are clearly so badly matched content wise it would be madness!
There are a few which would probably make good content matching but they’re written in the very same style requiring me to go to a page and log in and jump through some hoops and I just don’t have the time or inclination.

By: Matt Davies

Matt Davies — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:07:44 +0000

“On the other hand there is no way they could stop ranking for their own name the way they did without being given a penalty.”

Yes. There is. Google is not infallible and fluctuations happen all the time, especially with sites that have just had a massive overhaul such as GoCompare. It’s a pretty big leap in logic to assume there was any manual intervention on Google’s part here.

By: jonaths

jonaths — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:55:39 +0000

Seeing GoCompare at 16th for “car insurance” too. Can I just point you all back to the first sentence of my first comment

By: Patrick Altoft

Patrick Altoft — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:54:49 +0000

I don’t think I jumped the gun on this at all. My opinion is that they got a penalty and then somebody higher up at Google manually removed it when they realised they made a mistake. Looking at the facts we know that GoCompare didn’t do anything wrong so there was no reason for them to get a penalty. On the other hand there is no way they could stop ranking for their own name the way they did without being given a penalty.

Google messed up on this and has done the right thing by fixing it.

By: Matt Davies

Matt Davies — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:32:30 +0000

So unless it can be proved that anything has actually changed at GoCompare to return their brand ranking back to normal, I’d say there’s no reason to assume this was a penalty at all, wouldn’t you agree?

By: Neil Yeomans

Neil Yeomans — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:30:49 +0000

Looks like Gocompare.com’s rankings are returning to normal. Also looks like a lot of people were eager to jump the gun on this one rather than wait a few days to see how it panned out. It’s all to easy to jump about saying “penalty”, but I guess “Gocompare penalised again” is more sensational than “Gocompare.com stops ranking in the top 50 for their brand”. Look forward to reading an update Patrick.