Hitwise shows how much a Google penalization can affect a site that is #1 for a competitive term.

Below that are the Compete.com keyword stats from November to Feb for the term 'Car Insurance'

This give some insight on the effectiveness of having a higher placement for terms – how much traffic declines with each position decrease

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/UK%20Internet%20searches%20for%20car%20insurance%20and%20traffic%20to%20go%20compare%20%20gocompare%202007%202008%20chart.png
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/UK%20Internet%20search%20traffic%20from%20the%20term%20car%20insurance%20to%20money%20supermarket%2C%20gocompare%20consfused%20compare%20the%20market%20tesco%20compare%20anuary%20february%
202008%20chart.png

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2008/02/google_blacklists_gocompare.html

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Compete's stats for 'Car Insurance' from Nov to Feb

Destination Website Keyword Share Site Share Average Monthly Search Referrals

Search Referral Rank

"Search Referral Rank" is the ranking position of a site based on the total volume of search referrals the site receives from the specified keyword phrase.
Destination Website

"Destination Website" is the specific website that people in the Compete panel were referred to by the keyword phrase.
Keyword Share

"Keyword Share" is the percentage of total referrals a site receives from a keyword compared to other referral sites.
Site Share

"Site Share" is the percentage of all search referrals to a site from a keyword.
Average Monthly Search Referrals

"Average Monthly Search Referrals" is the running three month average of the total volume of search referrals that a site receives.
View the complete list of 171 results for 2 credits.
Your Credits

1 geico.com 15.41%
2.58% 442,191


2 progressive.com 13.76%
4.28% 318,613

3 esurance.com 10.56%

6.17% 138,621

4 allstate.com 7.36%

2.45% 253,629

5 carinsurance.com 5.62%

8.72% 67,733

6 statefarm.com 4.36%

1.21% 266,543

7 carinsurancerates.com 2.91%

22.56% 503

8 insurance.com 2.33%

2.39% 81,471

9 libertymutualonline...libertymutualonline.com 2.33%

6.96% 21,636

10 aig.com 2.03%

2.25% 69,423

11 yahoo.com 1.45%

0.00% 114,437,215

12 dmv.org 1.45%

0.07% 1,922,857

13 progressivedirect.com 1.26%

4.92% 32

14 doubleclick.net 1.16%

0.00% 14,296,385

15 aigdirect.com 1.07%

2.30% 22,050

16 myspace.com 0.87%

0.00% 136,208,998

17 live.com 0.87%

0.00% 16,139,449

18 nationwide.com 0.87%

0.79% 100,930

19 thegeneral.com 0.78%

2.65% 17,687

20 yieldmanager.com 0.68%

0.00% 3,035,479

[Formatting updated – Tony]

I have no trouble making google searches in which this so called "blacklisted" site is one of the search results. You can even easily make a search in which it is the top search result by using the "site" operator.

I am reticent to include a link or even repeat this site's name.
This thread may just be a ploy for publicity and to boost references, incoming links, searches and PageRank.

I first read about this UK based car insurance site crying foul about how Google is causing them to lose business. From what I've read, it was speculated that the site was using paid links to get it ranked higher. If this is what caused them to crash in PageRank than they should have paid more attention to the webmaster guidelines.

This site isn't "blacklisted" there are 1,000+ pages indexed and a homepage PageRank of 5?