NEWS: Google buys beat that quote! Google penalises beatthatquote.com? Surely not :)
BeatThatQuote.com, a UK price comparison site for loans, insurances, mortgages and legal services, was bought by Google it seems – and money.co.uk seemed to be first to break the news.
Here is:
- a news site, money.co.uk, that was allegedly punished in Google a few years back, for allegedly breaking Google guidelines, :)
- reporting on a site, Google, which allegedly penalised itself a few years back, for @9 months :)
- that has just bought BeatThatQuote.com, a site that many seo are claiming, is allegedly bending or breaking Google guidelines in a way that can get a site banned in Google search results:)
I’m confused.com :)
My head is spinning at least.
How can Google penalise moneysupermarket for instance, like they did (allegedly) a while ago, if they own a competitor like Beat That Quote? Will Google NEED to ban BeatThatQuote.com if it is found to be breaking the rules?
Some very high profile search marketers think so including Dave Naylor:
Dave has even funnier quotes on his Twitter stream if you want to check out.
I don’t really like discussing other’s seo strategies in public – but some newspapers might be in for it, as well as BeatThatQuote.com, as well as a lot of seo, if those alleged questionable links are confirmed as paid links, which is a practice clearly against Google guidelines.
UPDATE: Other credible sources (now backed by http://searchengineland.com/google-bans-itself-again-by-banning-beatthatquote-com-67437 - my usual source for seo news):
- http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/google-buys-beatthatquote-com-for-37-7m/
- http://www.seobook.com/beatthatquote-buythoselinks
- http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/110308-102442
- http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-buys-beat-that-quote-then-bans-them-beatthatquote.html
I recommend you don’t buy links as a standard, wether they work or not, because it’s against search engine guidelines, and you might suffer from fallout from something exactly like this. But how do you feel if you are a competitor and your competition has been bought by Google of all companies and it is confirmed (which this case is not yet) to be breaking the ‘rules‘ laid down by the very same search engine?
This one is going to be interesting to watch over the next few days and weeks…
I wonder if beatthatquote.com can give a quote on buying li………nah – better not! :)
Disclaimer: This post is opinion and conjecture at this point obviously…..
Update: Featured on Beat That Quote homepage, a quote from them:
BeatThatQuote.com today was sold to Google for GBP37.7 million. We think this deal is a tremendous opportunity for our company to develop new and innovative options for personal finance in the UK. Our team is excited about becoming a part of Google. We look forward to working with their engineers to create new tools making it easier for consumers to choose the right financial products. We think we can offer more transparency and better pricing information than existing online offerings.
Update: At the moment, less than a day after this acquisition was announced – Beat That Quote can’t even rank for ….. Beat That Quote! lol
Some other responses:
- http://blog.bigmouthmedia.com/2011/03/08/have-google-penalised-beatthatquote-com/
- http://www.seobook.com/beat-it-beat-it
I wonder what SEO company will be talking the fall this time :)
I understand that Google’s long-term plan to punish all the companies that break the rules is to to buy them up, one by one – thus ensuring a level playing field because there will only be one company.
Not sure David – as the grapevines goes Google can’t take the Farmer algo back – but keeping their eyes and ears open while developers fix the loopholes! If Google does what you say – then it will have to buy 2/3rds of the sites on the web and what people will do is — get a notable start-up and get millionaires. :)
[...] to quite a few sources, it looks as though BeatThatQuote have seen a lot of their rankings (including their [...]
:D OH How dare question the might of Sauron we wouldnt dream of placing our own site top , hell no. Like we wouldn’t promote our own site in the last update cough (youtube) That would mean we were being unfair and biased. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwYrZLvvJU
When you make the rules, I’m sure you can figure out a way to make them, so your own websites don’t break them… Then again, if you remember the Google’s SEO Report card, most other Google online properties are not great at following SEO best practices. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/googles-seo-report-card.html