Financial services companies breathed a collective sigh of relief last week on hearing Google’s announcement that it would shut down Google Compare.
The financial comparison service, which launched in the US just last year but had been in the UK since 2012, will close on March 23. Google Compare allowed consumers to get quotes from financial service providers for products including car, home and travel insurance, credit cards, and mortgages.
In 2014, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority investigated concerns that Google favoured its own Compare product in search results.
An email from the Google Compare team to partners read in part:
“Despite people turning to Google for financial services information, the Google Compare service itself hasn’t driven the success we hoped for…But after a lot of careful consideration, we’ve decided that focusing more intently on AdWords and future innovations will enable us to provide fresh, comprehensive answers to Google users, and to provide our financial services partners with the best return on investment.”
Why should you care?
For financial services companies, this seems like good news.
Speculation was that, if Compare proved successful in the UK and US, it would soon come to other markets.
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Jeremy is a Partner and Senior Consultant at SureFire. Jeremy has been working in search since 1996, when he joined the Australian search engine, LookSmart. After relocating to San Francisco, he was instrumental in the development of the company’s paid search ad platform. At analytics company Coremetrics (now owned by IBM) he established an in-house search agency managing campaigns for Coremetrics clients such as Macy’s, Bass Pro and Lands End. At Acxiom he managed members of the pioneering SEO firm Marketleap and worked with clients such as Capital One, American General Finance and Kaiser Health. Joining SureFire in 2009, he is the head of Paid Search Advertising and oversees the delivery of AdWords and other PPC campaigns. He also helps clients make sense of their website data.
