Google buys Beat That Quote… then bans them #beatthatquote
Google’s move into comparison verticals is already well underway – with mortgages, cinema listings, product reviews and credit cards already high profile additions to the regular SERPs. So the announcement that they’ve snaffled up BeatThatQuote for a tidy £37 million is no great surprise. Google’s strategy is to screw down into verticals wherever they can, effectively positioning themselves to squeeze out competition later down the line. At some point, your bread-and-butter SERPs for ‘cheap insurance’ or whatever isn’t just going to throw back the big names in the industry, but Google’s own products.
There’s an argument that says that this would make for a better consumer experience: affiliates have rarely been motivated to give impartial recommendations. With a good engine and no need to chase affiliate revenues, Google can put together something pretty sweet.
As anyone who’s had a hand in the comparison/shopping/financial product markets will tell you, they’re industries rife with some big link buyers who have ridden to the top of the SERPs through paid links as well as through big brand pushes (Aaron Wall filleted BTQ quite nicely, thus saving me a job and sparing you reading tedious accusations of hypocrisy in the comments).
For a while, we wondered whether Google would go the whole hog and ban Beat That Quote from the SERPs and, as of time of writing, they have. Of course, in such a notorious industry, they have to. Now that Google are such a vast name, their technical and business decisions aren’t just of interest to SEOs, but the wider media.
The recent JC Penney furoré shows that media awareness of what’s happening in the rankings is (finally!) becoming newsworthy in itself. Just as advertising deals and sponsorships make the business pages, there is no doubt that the press is getting hungry for stories from the world of search – putting Google’s actual practices (rather than it’s share price and PR) under the spotlight.
And so, despite buying the company, Google’s first act has been to can them from the rankings. They don’t even show up for ‘beat that quote‘. Normally, that’s heavy stuff, but here it kind of smells like a PR move. If Google hadn’t have banned them every SEO company in the cosmiverse would have been hotfooting it to Fleet Street waving backlink profiles under the noses of tech hacks. A small sign of the changing tenor of the times.
The really interesting thing is now is what Google does next. Having canned BTQ, do they now go after the whole industry as a kind of double whammy? If they’ve burnt Beat That Quote for their links, surely now they have to start torching all the sites and networks that played a part in supporting their rankings. And given the nature of that industry – and please note that I’m not claiming that other industries are immune – that could play merry hell for other sites.
And if they don’t do that, how long before someone makes their way to the papers to highlight someone with an equally dodgy backlink profile? Could it be that 2011 makes negative press coverage the new, hot SEO tactic. Food for thought.
12 Comments
Google Buys BeatThatQuote.com for £37.7m Then Penalises It? | Hobo - pingback
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laurent - http://wwwhelpmycash.com
Excellent article,… and, I got do it by typing “beat that quote” in google 🙂
Car Insurance - http://www.sheilaswheels.com
….and guess who is #1 for beat that quote?
Paul Carpenter - http://www.itsafamilything.co.uk
Why… I’ve really no idea 😉
Mark
If Google start penalizing all the comparison and others who buy links in the UK finance sector (which is almost all of the big ones), then these sites will have to pump more money into AdWords to keep their revenue going… guess who benefits from higher Adwords bids?
GOOGLE
Chris Gedge - http://www.further.co.uk
Nice 1st place ranking for “Beat that quote” guys. You must be getting a metric ton of traffic 🙂
Phill
“”better consumer experience””
Sheesh, I bet you own an Apple product too.
Steve Jennings - http://stevejenningsconsulting.co.uk/
At the risk of sounding like sour grapes….
Having had a little bit of experience of dealing with BTQ, I really wouldn’t be surprised if there were more skeletons waiting to be discovered and based on Google’s past history BTQ could just as easily slowly fizzle out under its new ownership.
But for John Paleomylites, he’s managed to offload a business that wasn’t doing anything too special, had no great IP (as far as I know), and was loosing a couple of million a year, and make a chunk of cash in the process – kudos to John!!
I’m going to go and wash my mouth out with lemon juice now….
Beat That Quote, Car insurance Aggregator! - pingback
[…] me take it to a tangent, We know that google just bought an aggregator, Beat the Quote. Then promptly banned them in the SERPs for shady SEO practices. In fact I love the fact that when […]
Ben
Looks like google have lifted the ban!
MoneySupermarket Direct.co.uk - http://www.moneysupermarketdirect.co.uk
Ben Google have not lifted the ban as if you do a search for beat that quote this site still comes up 1st and then other sites about Google acquiring Beat That Quote, it’s still way down the listings. But PPC it’s at the top.
Wonder when they plan to roll out in the UK
Google Now An Affiliate - Is This Bad? - pingback
[…] so they're in that vertical! They were buying links so it still doesn't rank for it's name! Google buys Beat That Quote… then bans them #beatthatquote Bistro MD coupon | Fitness equipment reviews Reply With […]