Our ongoing analysis of Google’s recently announced core algorithm update has shown a number of financial services brands and websites that have either gained or lost search traffic in the past days.
The core update was announced by Google earlier this week and is the search giant’s second such ‘announced update’ so far this year.
Announced updates are expected to cause considerable movement in the search results, so our analysis is monitoring the financial sector in the UK. Google’s updates typically take at least two weeks to fully roll out, so this early analysis will only provide a brief snapshot of what might be to come.
The analysis has been carried out using data from SEMrush, an online data provider that uses its keyword database to estimate organic search traffic for websites.
The winners
Money.co.uk is the clear winner so far. The comparison site has experienced an almost 70% improvement in search traffic in the days following Google’s announcement of the update. Fellow comparison sites, GoCompare and Confused.com have also experienced significant uplift in the days following the update, both experience around a 30% improvement in traffic.
Interestingly, six of the eleven brands found to have increased search traffic this week are predominantly comparison and/or content-led websites. In fact, the only website reviewed so far that is bucking this trend is Money Expert.
The losers
The losers so far are less pronounced. Only three brands have shown anything close to a marked change and one of these (Handelsbanken) lost only four percent of traffic, hardly significant and easily explained as a ‘blip’.
Insurance firm, Admiral and aforementioned comparison site, Money Expert both showed a drop in traffic of around 10%.
The summary so far
The real news here, so far, is that there is little significant change across the vast majority of brands we’ve reviewed to date. It has to be said, the algorithm update will still need time to roll out, so these results could change. The most significant mover so far is Money.co.uk, which seems to have benefited significantly this week. Having said this, Money.co.uk’s success is only a recovery, when factoring in traffic in 2019 which was significantly above the website’s current position.
Likewise, despite its drop this week, Admiral’s website is still on an upward trend when looking back over the past eight years. A minor setback, perhaps, but unlikely to keep the insurance firm’s marketing team awake at night.
