14 DAY TRIAL // By the here present I renew my warning to not trifle with Google, as it alone has the power to kill your business dead. If you're counting on advertising on the Internet, or if you are mostly using the web as a means of promoting your website, people not being able to find it unless they stumble upon it spells absolute disaster.
Hitwise, quoted by Search Engine Land, demonstrates just how dramatic a Google penalty can be in such a case. GoCompare was recorded as the number one return for a "car insurance" query in December, but saw its rank decrease to be somewhere on the seventh page after Google 'worked its magic' on January the 26th. Previously "capturing 17.49% of the all search traffic from the term," the penalty brought about an 87 percent decrease in traffic for it.
That is while the total number of searches run through the Mountain View-based company's search engine remained constant over the period. Dropping so far down the lane was heavenly manna for GoCompare's competitors. "Confused.com has increased by 77% since the 26th January, while traffic to Comparethemarket.com has tripled over the same period," said Hitwise.
The previous reported case of Google blacklisting a company was IncrediMail, an Israeli-based mail service, which lost 40 percent of its value after an official announcement stated that the advertising ties with Google had been severed. It's not similar to GoCompare in any aspects, except for the fact that this was the most severe blow delivered to the company in its entire history.
"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'," Hitwise concludes.