Not So Natural

So ok - a for-instance question. If one large parent company has a large number of sites, is it ok to cross link between one another? Could this be seen as spam? To what extent could this be seen as link spam - i.e. where can the line be drawn between useful crosslinks and anchor text ridden footers purely for search engines and not for users? Lets take a look at this in action across some of our top serps:

Car Insurance and Uswitch: Taking Uswitch as our example here. Uswitch have always done well in the Google serps but have recently become much stronger in the car insurance serp. They show fewer signs of artificial link growth than say the likes of Endsleigh or Directline - but have many anchor text rich links from within the Scripps Group. This includes sites like upmystreet, shopzilla and many of Scripps’ TV network domains such as the DIY Network.

Just take a look at the footer for each of the Scripps sites - blatant use of anchor text rich links to specific pages on the key network sites and yes - you guessed it - almost every site links to the car insurance page on uswitch, currently ranking 6 in Google for ‘car insurance’.

Mortgage and whatmortgage: Again, here we see a site doing particularly well for a core term by leveraging their parent company’s sites. WhatMortgage is part of the Charterhouse communications group and currently ranks at 9 for ‘mortgage’. A quick scroll down to the footer reveals, yes thats right, a huge block of anchor text heavy links to other sites in the group.

Cheap Flights and Cheapflights: The number 1 ranking site for cheap flights in Google is Cheapflights. Purely down to the domain name? Maybe. Or is this more than the consequent anchor text rich links courtesy of such a great domain name? Take a look at the footer. Cross links to the foreign versions of the site. Take a look at International page and subsequent foreign domains - all crosslinking back to the main UK and US domains with keyword rich anchor text.

Is this penalisable? Are these forms of links underhand and little more than good old link spam or simply good use of internal resource. Who is the bigger network spammer or are all forms just as bad? If Big G were to find a way of algorithmically detecting paid links or started aggressively targeting networks of links, how might it treat sites such as these?

Check out this blogpost from Hitwise Research Director Robert Goade. Very interesting traffic analysis of Gocompare and the other big players for car insurance since GCs Google penalty.

According to Hitwise, GoCompare were receiving 17.49% of search traffic for ‘car insurance’ before the ban. Now they are receiving 2.31% for the same term.

Hmm, So today I noticed all of Greenlight’s CNIDR spammy link network of subdomains appear to have been banned from google. Google appear to have been doing a good job recently at penalising spam. However, The Fool, Alliance and Leicester, Asda Finance and Natwest etc still rank well in major serps eg Mortgages. What are your thoughts?

So, finally it would appear Google have taken action against link spam and banned Go Compare - the spammiest of link spammers. Go Compare appear to, not only have been kicked out for car insurance, but don’t even rank for their name.

It appears however, if you scroll through the serps, they are 51st for most terms - e.g. car insurance. Could this simply be a plus 50 penalty?

Anyone want to place bets on when they will return?

As of about 4.30pm GMT today, the Google toolbar ceased showing any green bar ratings for PageRank. All sites are now grey. Does this mean the end to PageRank as we know it or is this simply a glitch? What would the loss of visible pagerank mean to link brokers and buyers?

IMHO - this could be the most effective way Google could combat link spam…

Your thoughts?

Lets dissect the current top three for the phrase ‘car insurance’ in Google UK.

• Go Compare
• Money Supermarket
• Tesco Finance

How are they there? What techniques are they using and do they abide by Google’s Guidelines? Lets take a look at the three sites:

Go Compare

First, lets cross the standard SEO on page tactics off the list shall we…

‘Car insurance’ present in the Title, H1 Heading and approx 3 times in copy, as well as in several navigational links pointing back to the home page.. all pretty standard.

Moneysupermarket

Same story here really. ‘car insurance’ present in page title, H1 heading, about 12 times in copy (with density of around 6%)

Tesco Finance

And again, Car Insurance present in title, H1 Heading, 6 times in copy and in navigational links from around site.

So - no variation in any of the ’standard’ on site tricks, no indication of any on-page spamming, no doorway pages, cloaking or BMW style Javascript redirects, just plain well built HTML.

So how about we look at page 11. Result number 101. What is so different to the site at 101 to the big 1,2 and 3?

I-Sure Insurance

So what are Isure doing wrong to be one hundred and first? A quick glance below the fold of this (particularly ugly) site will tell you - not that much different to the big 3. Car Insurance in Page Title, H1 Heading and 11 times in copy as well as in 5 headings, a total of around 6%. Now although slightly spammier in keyword density than say Go Compare, certainly not breaking any rules.

Now lets turn our attention to links. Firstly the numbers. Yahoo Site Explorer tells us:

• Go Compare: 11,900
• Money Supermarket: 26,600
• Tesco Finance: 365,000
• I-sure Insurance: 2,520

OK - so Yahoo is not the most reliable of link tools - especially for numbers, so lets have a look at some of the link sites themselves.

• Go Compare: Example GC1, Example GC2, Example GC3, Example 4
• Money Supermarket: Example MS1, Example MS2, Example MS3
• Tesco Finance: Example TF1, Example TF2, Example TF3
• I-sure Insurance: Example IS1, Example IS2, Example IS3

Clearly, all 4 sites have been purchasing links. Look at GC1 - plain old link buying. Approach a site, offer some cash, up goes the link. Money Supermarket have found a novel way in MS2 with non-rel=nofollow’ed links from most of the major papers - this example being the ‘best buy’ section in the telegraph. Example IS1 - some form of network. Links in straplines, easy to detect one may think - perhaps hence the PR1 of the link site, and poor position of I-sure? Perhaps most interesting of all, check out TF3 - very interesting. Look at the other sites on the page with similar links, now look at this Agencies client list…?!

Plenty of questions now spring to mind. Considering Google’s crackdown on paid links, how can these sites still be there?

Matt Cutts - what are your thoughts?

As a web master for an insurance company you may be asking - how can I even expect to abide by Google’s guidelines and rank in the top 100 if site number 101 is using paid links?

If companies are paying so much for these links, are these results actually very natural? The companies with the deepest wallets ranking the highest?