Google Rolls Out Auto Insurance Comparison

This is happening in CA, and I know we all heard of this in the past.

google-compare-auto-insurance.jpg


As expected, car insurance results on Google are getting a shake up as the company enters the lead generation game. Today, the search giant announced the launch of Google Compare for Auto Insurance.

With the tool, Google delivers up to 14 sponsored listings from insurers with rate quote information (it’s likely that number will increase as the program expands).


Users can buy policies online or by calling an agent from their phones. MetLife and Mercury Insurance are among the initial advertisers.

Auto insurance becomes one of the several verticals in which Google has entered — rankling aggregators and comparison sites among other along the way — including flight, hotels and shopping. In 2011, the company tested the rate quote waters with a short-lived program called Google Advisors that featured comparison shopping for mortgage lenders, credit card providers and banks. Google Compare for Credit Cards (operated by Google Compare Credit Cards Inc. in Mountainview, CA) is the only piece is all that remains of that original program.

I am not liking this Leviathan.....
 
You would think, with all the money available to google, that they could afford to charge the cell phone.

These comparison raters are always interesting. I wonder how close the rate is to what the prospect actually gets? Google could potentially have the option to add info to the comparison quote, such as actually pulling MVR and clue reports, but that is likely to limit the number of people that respond to the comparison.

It will be interesting to see how this works.

Dan
 
Mercury lets you quote and buy online. They then assign the policy to an agent.

Captives tend to do the same thing. They feel (probably correctly) that they lose to much business if they don't have the online mechanism.

Dan
 
One agency working with them is CoverHound, out of CA. You can check them out online :Coverhound.com

Personally, I don't think they can compete with a local agent that provides advice & excellent customer service.
 
We published this article today in response to the Google Compare announcement:

“’Google Compare’…The Latest ‘Apples to Apples’ Auto Insurance Comparison Illusion”
Virtual University -
 
We published this article today in response to the Google Compare announcement:

“’Google Compare’…The Latest ‘Apples to Apples’ Auto Insurance Comparison Illusion”
Virtual University -

your font should be a little larger imo, and add some headers to break up all that content, it reads like a dictionary.


On a side note, looks like GOOGLE is getting in trouble for anchor text spamming their own car insurance comparison. The SEO community called them out for it and they stopped it immediately!

Google Changes Car Insurance Links After SEOs Complain

Yesterday, Google launched auto insurance comparison ads and in their announcement, Google used what SEOs would call keyword rich anchor text to link to both the new auto insurance comparison portal and the old credit card comparison portal.

While only “large-scale article marketing” keyword rich anchor text is considered a “link scheme” by Google, some SEOs felt Google using these keyword rich anchor text links was “unnatural” and a way to manipulate their own organic search algorithms.

Google did not comment on the use of those keyword rich anchor text links but shortly after I posted a story on the Search Engine Roundtable, Google removed the keyword rich anchor text links.


BEFORE BEING CALLED OUT:
google-blog-anchor-text-rich-1425649494.png


AFTER BEING CALLED OUT:
after-link-removal.png
 
Gee! I wonder why google chose California for the first state to test market this?

Anyone want to guess which states will be the 2nd and 3rd test state? .....

I'll go first and guess Massachusetts and Hawaii.....

after that, google will have a slight problem.... all other 47 states use credit as a rating factor for auto insurance.
 
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