The Core

Surprised not to have seen this discussed anywhere here. 

The short version of the story: Hater of thin affiliate sites and shady SEO tactics, Google buys beatthatquote.com - a thin affiliate site that employs doesn't mind stepping over the google webmaster guidelines to get rankings.  Outed as big stinking hypocrites by Aaron Wall and others they then slap down their own site.

Would love to have been a fly on the wall to hear some of the conversations in the 'plex about this little drama.

I read Aaron Wall's post too... TBH are there many finance sites out there in any developed economy that aren't buying links one way or another.

BTQ never seemed to rank that well for money & insurance terms on Google UK... I've been monitoring the high CPC ones for a few years. Bing seems to like them a bit more though
I wonder the reasoning as to why it has been removed from the SERPs


BTQ quote from 2009: http://www.insiders-view.co.uk/insurancewide-hits-the-wall-closes/00528

QuoteBeatThatQuote.com would like to clarify to readers of this blog that our insurance comparison service has seen increases in quote volumes consistently since launch. We are also continuing to add insurers to our panels. We would further like to point out that in Q4 2008 BeatThatQuote.com was the UK's fastest growing aggregator (source: Hitwise) adding to our previous accolade for 2007 where BeatThatQuote.com was the UK's fastest growing aggregator for that year. (Source: Nielsen Ratings). It is clear, therefore, that BeatThatQuote.com is outperforming every other UK aggregator