After announcing the launch of Google Advisor in the US in May, is Google already planning to replicate the service in the UK?
About a month ago, Google announced in the US that it had officially entered the financial products comparison market with the launch of the imaginatively titled Google Advisor.
As noted in a post by Socaltech.com this has traditionally been the preserve of Southern Californian startups but lead generation and specifically financial services lead generation has taken a pretty significant trip north up the Pacific Coast.
While the announcement only seemed to include the US, it seems that something similar has also arrived on this side of the Atlantic.
A quick search for “mortgage” or similar upper funnel mortgage keywords on Google UK reveals an interesting appearance on the results page.
Taking pride of place at the top of the paid results is a Google comparison ad for mortgage comparison, inviting the consumer to “Compare mortgage deals”. The ad placement is listed as a ‘Comparison Ad’.
Clicking through takes you to a branded lead generation style page with various lender details and consumers can enter their specific mortgage requirements to see what deals are on offer.
They then have the option to either call a Google number which will connect them to the specific lender of their choosing or request a call back which effectively creates a lead.
The service looks almost identical to Google Advisor in the US which is multi-product taking in savings accounts, current accounts and the hugely lucrative credit cards market.
We shouldn’t really be surprised by this move, after all Google did pay almost £40m for BeatThatQuote.com in March this year so they are obviously looking very seriously at the UK personal finance market.
Only time will tell how successful this service will be and what other products will be arriving in the UK. It will also be interesting to see how many of the direct marketers that spend millions of pounds each year generating financial services leads through Google react to this latest development.
Whatever happens, it is going to be an interesting year for online financial services lead generation.
Reader comments (4)
Associate Director at OMD International
12:17PM on 16th June 2011
Google have been running Comparison Ads for credit cards for about a year now, so I am not surprised to see mortgages being rolled out. I would expect to see Google Advisor here in the UK in the not so distant future.
Cofounder at Leadfindr
5:52PM on 16th June 2011
There is so much traffic going to mortgage on Google that it won't take them long to work out whether this has legs commercially!
Although I did speak to somebody that called one of the numbers of a lender only to get an answer phone. How's that for putting the consumer first!
10:06AM on 17th June 2011
I'm sure there will be some serious competition issues with google placeing their adds so prominantly in the ppc window.
How will other companies compete?
What are other peoples views on the matter?
12:51PM on 23rd June 2011
We've already seen the dip in mortgage enquiries coming though for these terms and it is interesting it is being called Google Advisor as that is the last thing they are doing. All they show is a list of lenders who are paying to be there.
I don't see it would hurt the big PPC advertisers as it was never profitable to be top for the big terms. Where it does hurt is the reduced traffic to the top SEO positions which is where all the profit comes from for these companies.
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