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Despite only been launched back in November 2006 Gocompare.com has racked up some great statistics. Figures show that in their first 2 years alone they took part in over 11 million car insurance quotes (11.6 million to be precise!). After this time the figures increased dramatically and it is estimated that they now give out around one million insurance quotes per month. They handle a massive range of insurance quotes. The most expensive so far being for an 18-year old with a Mercedes C 180K SE, the total of the quote came to £8998.34. The cheapest quote they have said to have handled was for £60.90. This was for an Austin A35 being driven by a 52 year old man. They have not said whether these were paid out or not.
GoCompare Compare Insurance Online
Co-Founder of Confused.com Hayley Parsons is the lady who started off the comparison service. It is based In Gwent and grew very quickly after it was first opened. In fact in 2008 it was named by the Fast Growth Business Awards as ‘One To Watch’.
GoCompare #1 Insurance Comparison Site
Despite only being started 2 years prior, by the end of 2008 Gocompare was actually named number one comparison service for car insurance by an independent research company. This is because they actually had more insurance brands to choose from than any of their competitors. As a result of this is was also the first comparison site to join the British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA) back in May 2008.
It is thought that the reasons behind the fast success of this company is the unique approach that it took. As well as covering the normal insurance categories you would expect to see from a website travel, pet, home, life, health and d business insurance, financial products, utilities, breakdown cover and travel arrangements it had a number of less known insurance categories to choose from in order to cater for everyone. The sheer number of companies that it gets quotes from for its comparisons also puts it as a front runner in insurance comparison companies (For example it compares over 100 companies for car insurance, 500 airlines for flights and 50 companies for hoe insurance). However that list is forever changing and in some months it takes on as many as 9-10 new companies in any one category
The main thing that GoCompare prides itself on is that it compares both the price of the product and the features that it offers. They were one of the first companies to do this, although many have followed suit and now offer this service.
When you go on the site you also get the choice to specify parts of the cover which are essential to you. This allows you to filter out companies that may be cheaper but have policies or rules that make the insurance cover unsuitable for your needs.
However GoCompare has had both its ups and its down. It is thought that in January 2008 they were hit by Google penalties for breaking guidelines. It is thought that have paid for links and reviews in order to get a high google ranking, which isn’t allowed. As a result of this they were hit by a drop in their ranking and this in turn resulted in around 87% less traffic then they had previously been getting. This happened again in April 2009 according to a report by Econsultancy. However it seems that Google and GoCompare have since made their peace and GoCompare now receive good ranking and traffic from the world wide known search engine.