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Less than a year ago, Google officially announced Google Advisor, which let searchers compare prices on credit card fees, CDs, checking and saving accounts and also mortgage rates. Sometime about a month ago, Google drops the mortgage portion of Google Advisor.
Image via paulspoerry.com
If you try to access the section at google.com/advisor/mortgages you are 404ed. Google dropped it and never said why.
There is an ongoing thread in the Google Webmaster Help and other forums with complaints but Google never responded.
One user said:
I cannot believe that it was not not doing well. I was using it every day to monitor mortgage rates. I found it to be the best tool to get competitive rates from big and small lenders. Most of the other online sites do not provide access to smaller lender data and they are often way more competitive than the larger ones.
The big question is why did Google remove this option and left the others?
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Comments:
Michael Cropper
02/29/2012 01:57 pm
Hopefully they will get rid of Hotel Finder next too < / wishful-thinking>
eSocialMedia
02/29/2012 04:45 pm
I can see the value of Google Advisor to the researcher. However, as an advertiser and an online business developer I had strong concerns over the direction this type of service represented. The comparison engine stepped over the line of being an ad platform to being a competitor with many of the advertisers that generate significant revenue for Google. LendingTree, Intuit, Mint, LowerMyBills and more just in the mortgage and loan space are in direct competition with advisor. This model adds to a growing trend of other ploys (See Bing adds ratings and reviews to ads) where the user's experience takes place off of your branded website draining the advertiser's ability to create deeper interactions with their brand. Not to mention having some control over that experience. Play this model all the way out and Google is a lead generation portal capturing new prospects and delivering them to businesses. Why then should I advertise. It's my guess that in part Google's numbers showed ad spend was dropping off where advisor was competing with major advertisers.
Kevin79
03/05/2012 03:19 pm
It has to do with state licensing for mortgage brokers.