Back in February 2009 when the original Google brand update or “Vince update” hit the US there was a lot of talk regarding why this had happened and how long the results would last. In the UK the original update was not a heavily influence in rankings although a few new sites made an appearance in the top 10, these sites would be considered “big brands”. Now after a month or two of this activity all things seemed to return to normal and these big brands returned to the lower depths from where they had risen.

However around the beginning of June 2009 the results in one particular high value industry (travel insurance) changed overnight to match the results seen in the USA back in February. Sites that had been in the top 10 for years all of a sudden have been forced into the depths of pages 2 and 3 being replaced with well known high street brands. I have collected some data which some of you may find interesting if you work in this industry, even if you don’t it’s worth taking note because this sort of activity seems to be spreading.

This first table shows a snap shot of the top 40 websites that rank under the term “travel insurance”, the results are compared from the start of June to the 6th of July. A green arrow indicates a positive increase, red showing a negative drop and a green plus symbol indicating a new entry.

brand-update-june

  • Some sites worth mentioning:
  • Post Office moving from position 12 to number 1
  • Tesco’s moving from position 20 to number 7
  • Essential Travel, Go Travel Insurance and more massively dropping

The next diagram actually shows the rankings over the last 5 months for the term “travel insurance”. In this diagram you can clearly see that this update has hugely effected the landscape in this industry.

brand-update-juneb

I have heard this is happening for other financial terms too such as “car insurance” and Job related terms



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