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Google buys BeatThatQuote.com for £37.7m then penalises them!

This is perhaps the most audacious thing Google has done but it seems they have bought the financial comparison site Beatthatquote.com for £37.7m

Update: within 24 hours of the acquisition beatthatquote.com no longer ranks on Google when you search for “beatthatquote”. Still no announcement from Google on the matter.

beatthatquote

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.

We are confident that by combining BeatThatQuote.com’s expertise in UK financial products with Google’s technology, we’ll accelerate innovation in this field, benefiting consumers and the companies offering these products. We plan to keep working with our current partners and look forward to working with new ones, too.

I have no idea how Google can hope to get this past regulators. This is going to cause a lot of controversy.

Good news of course for the company involved!

If Google was going to do a product search style comparison engine they might cut out the middlemen and aggregate deals directly from big financial institutions. However with this move they are buying one of the middlemen sites. Perhaps Beatthatquote.com had some good software and Google wanted that? Will be interesting to see how finance & insurance price comparison sites like Go Compare and Money Supermarket fare over the next couple of years once Google does something in this space.

My personal opinion is that Google should steer well clear of doing things like this. If they want to build their own services such as shopping or financial comparisons I can understand but surely any site they own has to be removed from the index in a sector like this?

Via money.co.uk

BY Patrick Altoft AT 5:20pm ON Monday, 7 March 2011

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3 and has worked in the SEO industry for over 10 years. With experience across some of the worlds largest brands as well as startup businesses Patrick is well known in the industry and speaks regularly at the major SEO conferences and events. Follow Patrick on Twitter or Google+

Comments

  • Julian

    £37m for that site, crazy. I wonder if it will sail through the farmer update untouched?

  • Luke

    Wow,

    Google buys a finance site which itself is receiving dofollow keyword-anchor links from a major UK newspaper/affiliate.

  • http://www.concept-i.dk/ Rosenstand

    The first word that came to me: Hipocrisy!

    On the other hand: This migh tell us that all the previously banned comparison sites will be back in the SERPS…? No? OK – what’s next, Google?

    Thanks for sharing, Patrick.

  • http://searchesntopics.com wilson

    BeatThatQuote.com was sold to Google for GBP37.7 million.I think this deal is a tremendous opportunity for BeatThatQuote.com to develop new and innovative options for personal finance in the UK.
    http://searchesntopics.com/2011/03/07/google-buys-uk…tthatquote-com/
    hasnat

  • http://mehh.co.uk Matthew

    That is an awful amount of money! I wonder what Moneysupermarket thinks about this :)

  • http://www.webmastergenerators.net webgen

    It is kind of odd that Google buys such a compagny. A hint of a new strategy perhaps?

  • buyer beware

    Has Google decided that comparison sites that refer you on are as useful in its search results as content farms? It might have bought BeatThatQuote to take it and every other referral comparison site out of its index.

  • interfan

    This is huge news for the comparison sector…….
    On the surface £37.7 million is a lot for a company that lost £2 million last year (including a £2 million investment by its owner) especially when that company has a reputation for poor lead quality in the marketplace. BTQ also has a very aggressive attitude towards marketing to its active and lapsed databases of customers. There is a certain amount of risk to the Google brand here.
    I think what Google are really interested in here is the technology platform for White Labelling technology and the lead distribution back end platform. Also the MD has a track record in delivering great technology platforms for corporates. BTQ’s highly commoditised lead distribution is in line with Googles model too.
    In terms of cost – Moneysupermarket’s market cap is £466m (this may fall as a result) so £37m is really cheap for a product that can never fail with Google’s support. In addition the fact that BTQ power MSN and Yahoo! had an influence on this purchase. Knowing how good a negotiator the owner is, I’m really surprised at how little BTQ actually went for.
    Nonetheless will be interesting to see what happens to BTQs SEO and search over the next year or so…….

  • http://www.searchengineoptimisationworks.com Paul

    Wow go Google.

    But I agree Patrick, regulator bodies in UK/Europe and in the States will probably have some issues here.

    Of course, Google could always have ‘child companies’ and buy businesses under those. But I am not sure of the legal regulations involved.

    Google already has Credit Card comparisons as well as Real Estate and Property, so no surprise they going for something like this at all.

  • http://www.indiabucket.com/ Rakesh Kumar

    £37m is too much! I think Google must think before taken this step.

  • http://www.jezza101.co.uk jezza101

    YIKES!!

    A few of my former colleagues will be interested in this! I actually left a different comparison site after a sale – I’d have stayed if Google bought us. Gaaaaah! If only…!

  • iwonttellumyname

    Paul wrote : Google already has Credit Card comparisons as well as Real Estate and Property, so no surprise they going for something like this at all.”

    @Paul, very interesting. do you have more info about that?

    Thank you!

  • http://www.webmastercrunch.com/ Wallace

    it’s quite crazy to spend the money to buy this site, it’s probably the most expensive to drop a site’ serp anyway.

  • http://www.aureliustjin.com Aurelius Tjin

    Whoa! It is too huge amount of money to buy this kind if site. I didn’t even know this site. :)

  • http://www.badkamertegeltjes.nl Badkamertegels

    37 million? Lets have a look in Googles wallet;)

  • Pingback: Beat That Quote.com: Google's Latest Monopoly Move

  • http://www.exochat.com Kai

    Google are forcing themselves to take a beating by becoming too big! And everyone thought Microsoft would be the biggest in the year 2000!

  • SEO Manchester

    As soon as a saw the title for this blog i started laughing, i completely agree with Kai Google are taking a beating for becoming to big!
    Thanks for posting
    Danny

  • http://www.billigt-toej-blog.dk Billigt mærketøj

    Hmm…I don’t think I like that way of doing business. But hey, if that’s the way Google are working there’s nothing we can do about it. Nomatter what I think that the guys at beatthatquote should be happy about their £37.7m :)

  • http://www.hoodwebmanagement.com Hood Web Management

    Right.. ‘penalizes’. I think ‘assimilates into the borg’ might be more accurate.

  • http://www.kradsetraeer.dk Kradsetrae

    I find this a bit weird. All though it’s a smart move by Google in my eyes. “If you can’t beat them – join buy them!”

  • http://www.hundefoderet.dk Hundefoder

    Wow, Google really needs to be carefull about not getting too big and get unpopular. But I bet the guys at beatthatquote are probably happy about the money afterall.

  • http://www.wallstickers4kids.co.uk/ kids wall stickers

    It’s because they need to get money for their shopping.

  • http://www.seolivewire.com SEO Livewire

    Revisited this post and love it!

  • http://www.dental-relax.de Zahnarzt Düsseldorf

    Google basically does whatever it wants, its just aweful. Just imagine you have a site you have to life off and the next day, people can’t find it (for whatever reason, you won’t get any answers from Google anyway; or they simply will say its an algorithm change). G sucks.

  • http://www.girokonten-test.com Girokonten Test

    And there is nothing we can do about it…

  • http://www.hautzentrum-hengge.de/ Hautarzt Düsseldorf

    What Google does on AdWords with some campaigns sucks. They basically can decide to destroy your business over night without given any explanations.

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