The Google Blacklist Nightmare!

Everyone’s worst nightmare came to call on GoCompare.com recently when they suddenly sank without trace after breaking Google’s infamous, largely secret and ever-changing ‘rules’. Robin Goad, research director at Hitwise gives us some nice graphics which make the blood run cold! Kind of like watching a disaster movie from the 1970s – all’s well, people are laughing and happy and then someone sees smoke coming out of the air vent on the 250th floor….

What happened was that GoCompare was riding high on the search term ‘car insurance’ until one fine day on or around 26 January when it plummeted faster than the stock exchange on Black Monday. The reason for GoCompare’s ‘delisting’ is a matter of debate across the net. No one can be absolutely sure why and it’s probably not fair to speculate – though I’m pretty sure I know why – but suffice to say it’s a salutary lesson for everyone to listen to their SEO people, keep up to date and don’t try to do anything you think is clever! Because it probably won’t be!