Google Shuts down Google-Compare Website For Mortgages, Credit Cards, Auto Insurance

Google plans to close down its Google Compare site, as it started to lose appeal for advertisers who buy its search ads.

Google is closing its comparison-shopping website. Its decision to close the website marks a retrenchment from its entrance into sales of financial products, such as credit cards and insurance, according to partners and representative of the company.

The US company has continued to run Google Compare in the United Kingdom for three years and begun its highly expected US website in March 2015. Despite the company being the largest name in insurance, search industry partners and internal e-mail stated the consumers were never actually caught by webpages.

The technology giant, who established many insurance industry collaborations to access broker networks, informed partners that it is closing down US and British webpages in about a month. According to an email to partners, the company stated it would be focusing upon its mainstay ad product ‘Adwords’, where ‘insurance’ is amongst the most profitable search terms.

When the American search company entered the insurance-selling business, it became a part of the huge list of tech companies that have been making efforts to shake the market by delivering products such as home owner and auto insurance online.

These sites have been developed to assist customers in saving money by showing multiple quotes to them at the same place. Some of these websites are only online insurance agencies. Other sites, such as Google, are following a commission model by sending referral traffic to insurance companies and receiving a fee whenever anyone purchases a policy.

The rivalry did just little to challenge a large number of insurance agencies who have continued to act as the business’s backbone, but Google and other companies would probably continue to try.

In 2013, $481 billion were written by US insures in premiums charged for casualty and property insurance, which mostly consists of commercial, home and auto insurance, as revealed by an industry group ‘Insurance Information Institute’. This would put estimate commissions of agents – including minor commission agents and brokers, who are sellers of huge commercial policies – at about $50 billion.

Insurance industry partners said the Google has left open the opportunity to create a new insurance product later. Specifically, these people told the company would probably veer away from a side-by-side design that is working well for commoditized devices, such as cameras, but is difficult to employ on a complicated product, such as individual insurance policy.

Wall Street Journal reported that consumers often use multiple websites to compare, which consumes a huge amount of time for making decisions regarding financial products.