GoCompare TV Advert pushes searchers to use branded search term

Back in February GoCompare.com caused quite a stir in the online and finance world alike by having a great many of their listings drop from page 1 of Google.

Speculation was abound why this was, with the greater majority suggesting that GoCompare had had a vast number of bought links removed by Matt Cutts and his spam team.

The U.K. car insurance market place is very profitable, particularly for companies that are ranking high on generic terms in the S.E.R.P.s. This space is often dominated by comparison or aggregation sites and rumours are always abound to the techniques that are being used by the sites to achieve the rankings they do.

It;s for that very reason that the GoCompare removal caused such a stir. Robin Goad, Research Director for Hitwise UK, did a very informative piece at the time highlighting the consequential drop in traffic when you get found out using such high risk tactics. Robins traffic graph is the true embodiment of a picture telling a thousand words!

Through out all this news, GoCompare only ever ranked highly for one listing [gocompare car insurance] and they haven't been seen for any car insurance generic terms since their initial drop.

It was interesting then, to see that they have integrated this single term into their above the line campaign. Over the weekend one of my colleagues saw a changed GoCompare TV advert, this one starts with a user typing in [gocompare car insurance]. An interesting tactic, this is likely to get a lot of people typing this into their favourite search engine. It would be my guess that they have had a hard 3 months, with traffic at an all time low, this will be a good way to try and regain some of that traffic. Particularly with the 2nd seasonal spike for car insurance only a few months away.

You can see the GoCompare Advert here.

1000 thank yous to Mike T for the tip off!

Google maps and the Columbo One box

Every once in a while I stumble upon something that really tickles me, it doesn't happen often, but it happened to me today. Twice!

Here's the first;

For a reason I'll not go into, i was doing a search on everybody's favourite search engine for [Columbo].

I got this is 5th position.

Doesn't that seem strange. It's a link for a (rather good) Columbo movie with a map expandable attached. I've never seen something like that for a non-location centric search before. A little investigation shows that Google algo is picking up the address given as one of the filming locations for the film. 9000 W Sunset Blvd is where they filmed the scenes in Ken and Jims office, apparently!

I thought that was cool -that was "tickled Chris No.1"

The second came when i clicked through on to the map shown above and started playing around a little. I zoomed out, turned off Street view and turned on Live Traffic info - I've always liked the feature and really cant wait till we get it over here in the UK.

Today i saw something new for me, its probably been there a while mind! Have a look at this map. At the time of writing it shows three things 1) The traffic flow lines 2) The roadworks symbols and 3) Little signs telling me where there's been car accidents!

I mean - that's awesome! Apart from the fact that it tells me that People living in West Hollywood can't drive (from the sheer number of accidents there are), I can find out what the accident is and the status of it - How many injured, the severity of the accident, when it happened (was reported?) and when it's expected to be cleared.

So, that was Google's second "tickle" of the day for me. It's probably been a feature for a while, and I've just not seen it.

Do any of you know of any other such "tickle-tastic" features?

UK Faster Payments service go lives

You might remember, a full 3 years ago, there was some news from A.P.A.C.S. and the O.F.T. about a new faster payments service that would allow almost instantaneous transfers between accounts held at different branches and, different banks.

There has long been an under-current of dissatisfaction amongst bank users about the length of time it can take for money to be transferred from one bank account to another. Often this time was exacerbated if the accounts are with completely different banks.

Well, in 2005 the OFT agreed, and asked for a new system to be developed that created far faster transfer rates and ultimately happier customers. After 3 years in the making (Developed by Immediate Payments Limited with APACS at the helm and 13 founding banks - see below). Today marks the launch of the a brand spanking new, super speedy, service. Meaning For the very first time phone, internet and standing order payments can move within a few hours - almost at the touch of a button.

Here is a brief diagram on how it all works. Theres a far better breakdown of the technical ins and outs over on this APACS webpage.

As this was a development project across 13 differnt banks, most of them with their own proprietary banking systems, this has been no mean feat. 3 years may seem like a lot, however i actually think this has been done very quickly.

Fingers crossed it all goes according to plan and the money transfers in teh hours we're promised!

Here's, information of on the type of payments covered and very handy sort code checker for you to check the account your sending money too can accept the super speedy transaction.

Lastly, if you bank with one of teh following banks (or one of there subsidiaries) you should be able to take full advantage of this:

Abbey, Alliance & Leicester, Barclays, Citi, Co-operative Bank, Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks (National Australia Group) HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide Building Society, Northern Bank (Danske Bank), Northern Rock, Royal Bank of Scotland Group (including NatWest and Ulster Bank).

The social lender and the financial comparison site

I've been a fan of the concept of Social Lending for sometime now.

For those of you who are unaware of this relatively new phenomenon, social lending is when two consumers are able to use a social lending meeting place to interact and create a lending transaction, with consumer A lending to consumer B at a pre-define rate.

This has a number of benefits than consumers seeking lending from banks or other financial institutions. The first is there is an inherent distrust in financial institutions and how they deal with our money, may have hidden charges etc.

Social Lending takes all that away, its a very simple transaction between two consumers, both of whom have been credit scored through the website which acts as an introducer and mediator. In simple terms, no middlemen!

Here in the UK Zopa was the first to market with this as a proposition, they are around 3 years old now and have a small, but loyal user base. As an offering, it was a strange and new to UK consumers, however its one that i think more savvy consumers are starting to warm too.

I was prompted to right this post by an email i received from one of the many financial comparison websites that we have here in the UK. The email was pushing personal loans and included the best buy rate table below.

Now, this is the first ever time I've seen a social lender on a comparison site amongst more traditional lenders. As you can see Zopa is the top of the best buy table here - if i were a consumer, I'd most likely try and source a loan from Zopa over the rest of the lenders shown, particularly in the current financial climate.

However, when I tried to find out more about Zopa's remarkably low rates i hit a dead end. There is no corroborating "good news" on the Zopa site about this loan rate. In-fact I did find the following sentence at the top of their Personal Loans page;

"Right now you can pay just 8.0%APR as a typical fixed rate based on borrowing £5,000 over 3 years as an A* credit rated borrower."

Here, they advertising their headline (read best) rate. Where is the 5.5% APR the comparison site promised?

I can fully understand Zopa wanting trying to gain more exposure through a mid-sized comparison site, however could this be a little damaging for their brand? I certainly don't think I'd be going back after a wasted journey.

Consumers don't like it when their hopes are raised only to be let down - they feel mislead. interestingly, their have been some renewed calls for comparison sites to be better regulated. I think this is a good example of where it would be a good idea.

This kind of advertising can easily be perceived as mis-leading and, whether it is or not, the damage is done to the advertising Brand rather than the comparison site / advertiser.

If i were Zopa, I'd be talking with this particular advertiser and push for a lot more transparency. I might even go as far as writing some specific supporting content for it!

Icky-Sticky Search Engines

It's been a while since I've written a search-centric post. Given the recent news about Google teleport i thought I'd blog some of my thoughts and comments on the "stickiness" of search engines.

For those who don't know, Google Teleport is the general name being given the additional search box that is being shown on some sites for a branded search. Here's a good example of it in action for Nasa.



All this functionality does is simply allow for a site search to be carried out from within the search results. This functionality has been available for users of the Google toolbar for sometime. It's never been used from within the search results (unless you knew the correct syntax to use). This simply now makes it available to the masses now, rather than those "in the know".

I'm interested by this feature, I think its a clever move by Google. It allows for them to further monetise, at generic prices, what a consumer may consider to be a branded search. Of course, strictly speaking the teleport search is a generic search, but i don't think a consumer would view it like that.

Lets look at it in action. OK, Joe and Jill Blogs are customers of HSBC. They want to go and look for travel insurance. So they punch [HSBC] into the search box. Thats a massive buying signal. Google thinks, this customer wants H.S.B.C. Seeing the teleport search box, they then punch [Travel Insurance]. The natural results highlight the correct H.S.B.C. page to go to, however all the P.P.C. ads are for H.S.B.C. competitors, giving a greater chance for the consumer to build a shopping list and go to a competitor (and for Google to get a nice P.P.C. fee for a generic click). I'd love to see some click through percentages for this in the future!

Now, this post is about Sticky search engines. This development, in my opinion, makes Google more sticky. It allows the customer to stay on Google for longer, therefore allowing Google the chance to further grab some nice juicy P.P.C. revenue.

Ask.com made an explicit decision last year to re-vamp their site, and maake a lot more customer friendly. They introduced a number of features with Ask3D in June 2007 that meant a far stickier site. This resulted greater customer relevancy, at the expense of a large drop in their click through rates. However, Ask.com clients (businesses) have seen better conversion and CTR becuase their adds are more relevant to a customer search.

This is a double edged sword for Ask.com, but i think they've done it the right way and achieved the best of both worlds; Satisfaction for consumer as-well as client.

I've been saying it for a while, but i really do think that Ask.com are one to watch -they are sneakily gaining ground. In fact, hitwwsie published the top 5 search engines for December a month or two ago, and Ask.com appeared in place of Yahoo!. this was also at a very key time of year for researching and purchasing online. Yahoo! have since regained there positions - however increased press about their potential acquisition will be giving them some good (and free!) brand awareness.

So what do you think? What other innovations could increase stickiness for search engines?

Chris

UK Credit Crunch: 101

I wrote this post for one of my internal finance newsletters. It had such a good response that i thought it would be worthwhile posting up here too.

"Credit Crunch" is a finance term that in its simplest sense, refers to a state in which there is a short supply of cash to lend to businesses and consumers and interest rates are high. It can get more complicated than that though.

It was brought on initially by too many people in the United States defaulting on loans that they simply couldn't afford. These are called sub-prime loans and were being given to US lenders who, in many cases, had no means of paying them back. In essence, the cycle looked generally like this:

• US Sub-prime consumers defaulted
• the lender lost money (lots)
• this affected worldwide money markets (other banks had to spend money to try and help those in the red
• Those banks then suffer losses too
• UK Banks affected (Northern rock in particular)
• Interest rates rise, lending rates go up
• borrowing slows, consumer confidence drops (hence poor Christmas sales being reported)
• potential of recession increases.

Now, UK interest rates are on their way down now. In December they drop from 5.75% to 5.5%, and February saw a further drop to 5.25%. Why? Well, the Bank of England dropped rates to try and offset the lack in consumer confidence / spending / borrowing brought on by said "credit crunch".

Ultimately, the Bank of England is walking the proverbial tightrope just now. Future rate moves are critical as there are opposing pressures on the economy (more about these in the next post).

My guess is that rates will drop for a bit over 2008 - how far is anyones guess. We'll certainly not see the drastic cuts that the US took in December!

P.S. Some of the UK's heavy weight economists are now predicting a drop of Interest rates to as low as 4%!

The first Thursday of the month - Rate decision day

I almost forgot all about this! We're only 30 minutes away from hearing the latest news on BoE base rate movement.

After the United States put their neck on the line with last months HUGE rate drop, it was initially anticipated that the UK would follow suit.

This isn't going to happen. Inflation worries are way to strong and a drop in lending would fuel these. The UK economy is still very much on a tightrope. Only small adjustments over a longer period of time will work here i think.

OK BoE interest rates - Another Wonga Wolrd prediction on its ways. Well, lets face it, they are not going to go up are they.....Nope....

The Wonga World February rate prediction: Rates will drop today - but only by a quarter point. We'll be on a base rate of 5.25% from 12pm today.

Fingers crossed i can keep my rate predictions at 100% - Only 20mins to find out!

EDIT: - The 100% record is maintained! In all seriousness, this is good news for the UK economy, my next post will go into some details why this is.

Wonga World predictions coming true!

This post is a little late, however i still felt it worthwhile posting.

Last week i was lucky enough to be invited to talk at the Forum e-marketing based in Paris on behalf of my friends and colleagues in Bigmouthmedia France.

My presentation was on "The evolution of search: Wheres it's come from and where its going!" It was a really fun topic to research and present on! The french attendees were great, i don't speak much of the french language, so i did my presentation in English. The attendees still seemed to enjoy my talk and it ended with standing room only. 'Future of search' topics are always very popular!

Regular readers of the blog will know that i like making little predictions, and i ended my presentations with some predictions that were specifically meant to be controversial;

Wonga Word prediction number 1: Microsoft will buy Yahoo! in Q1 of 2008
Wonga Word prediction number 1: Yahoo! will get into online video more with a purchase of a specific provider

Well, I was as surprised as everyone else to find out only 2 days later that both had come true (ok - i know the Microsoft / Yahoo! deal is up in the air - but the MS offer is official enough for me to count that as a "tick in the box" for my prediction skills!)

I seem to be lucky with predictions just now - so heres one for 2008:

Wonga World Prediction number 3: This is the year of Ask.com! I believe will make better headway this year than they have in the last few!

A massive personal bigmouthmedia THANK YOU to our french based bigmouths - Michael Pean, Constantin Aubrée, and Anthony Haslé for looking after me while i was over. They did an awesome job at the 2 day conference!

Bank of America - Early adopters?

Anyone who's given me the time to evangelise on finance and online will know that a topic close to my heart is that of the lack of early adoption (or adoption full stop!) of online technologies by large 'ivy league' financial organisations.

Well, it brought a smile to my face recently when i was browsing the Apple.com website and stumbled across this.



As many of you will know, when Apple released the iPhone and Ipod Touch products, there was a large backlash against how locked up the devices were. After a month or two Apple made it easier for users to create 3rd party applications and install them on their to new headline products.

You can see the response to this has been overwhelming, simply by the amount of web apps that have been created and are now highlighted on the apple.com website.

As my screenshot above shows. The Bank of America have been one of the first to highlight the compatibility of their mobile banking service on the iPhone Safari browser. Now, phone based digital banking access is not new, however the fact that they moved quickly to highlight their compatibility with the iPhone so quickly shows a forward thinking, cutting edge online strategy.

I've used Bank of America as good examples of early adoption in the finance industry before. Last year, Andrew Girdwood, our Head of Search at bigmouthmedia, attended a E-consultancy conference and was lucky enough to hear Brett Hurt from Bazaarvoice speak. Bazaarvoice are a company that allow for your online customers to rate your products and leave feedback on their experiences with it. Its a great way to generate content and also shows that a vendor is encouraging transparency of customer views of their products. They are most commonly used in retail sites, like figleaves.com.

Well, I was very pleased to hear that Bank of America had engaged Bazaarvoice and are planning on implementing their technology on their personal finance products. In the UK marketplace, this is unheard of. Most UK financial institutions seem to have a concern over 1) policing customer comments on user generated content (i think Bazaarvoice technology can do this automatically) 2) taking such a bold step towards full online adoption and, dare I say it, embracing Web 2.0 technologies.

My view on this is simple; Over the last 3/4 years the UK finance industry has adopted online well, however it seems to be struggling to take the next step and really starting to use the newer online technologies to attract, convert and keep customers.

Online customers are now "Empowered Users". They are getting used to being given the freedom that web 2.0 technologies allow them. Unless UK institutions start to make this much need transitions, customers will start to move to their competitors. Online services used to be a key differentiator for UK personal finance, (think about egg.com and their then innovative online credit card servicing) until the market levelled out a little. Online services are again becoming a key differentiator and UK customers are starting, once again, to make purchase decisions based on this.

Bank of America, i think, have realised this and seem to have a strong online strategy that includes looking at and implementing newer web technologies.
Well done Bank of America, I applaud you.

UK Interest rate decision dates

The Bank of England has published their MPC meeting dates on their website - you can find them here. Interestingly enough they have the dates back to 1997 and a nice PDF detailing the Banks interest rate decisions back to 1970!

I've taken the 2008 dates and listed them for you below:

Forthcoming Dates:

MPC Decision	MPC Minutes	Inflation Report
2008
9 & 10 January	23 January
6 & 7 February	20 February	13 February
5 & 6 March	19 March
9 & 10 April	23 April
7 & 8 May	21 May	14 May
4 & 5 June	18 June
9 & 10 July	23 July
6 & 7 August	20 August	13 August
3 & 4 September	17 September
8 & 9 October	22 October
5 & 6 November	19 November	12 November
3 & 4 December	17 December