Almost 5 years ago, Google launched Google Advisor, which ultimately turned into Google Compare. In short, it was an affiliate model for Google to allow advertisers to promote credit cards, auto insurance, mortgages and travel insurance products and services on a CPA model.
Well, Google has told their Google Compare partners that it is closing down in a month, on March 23rd.
Search Engine Land secured an email from a partner, which Google confirmed it legit:
Dear Partner,Beginning on February 23, 2016, we will start ramping down the Google Compare product, which is currently live in both the US and UK. We plan to terminate the service as of March 23, 2016. As you know, Google Compare (formerly Google Advisor in the U.S.) has been a specialized, standalone service that enables consumers to get quotes from a number of providers for financial products such as car and travel insurance, credit cards and mortgages.
Despite people turning to Google for financial services information, the Google Compare service itself hasn’t driven the success we hoped for. We greatly appreciate your partnership and understand that this decision will be disappointing to some. 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.
We’re grateful for all the feedback that you have provided over the course of this product’s development, and we are looking forward to partnering with you to achieve greater success in the future.
We will work with you during this transition and beyond. Please reach out to your Google representative if you have any questions and to discuss the next steps.
The Google Compare Team
When Google first launched this and expanded into more and more markets, many SEOs were not happy. Why should they place their ads above our mortgage search engine or credit card search engine that specializes in this service. Well, Google tired, and decided for one reason or another that they should close it down. So this should be good news for those in this space.
Google did close mortgages in Advisor back in 2012, only to try launching it again later. It is not like Google didn't try to make it work but clearly this is not the space they want to be in.
Google often tries things and closes them, so ultimately, this should not be a huge surprise.
My bigger surprise is how much more attention this is getting compared to the four ads change.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
