Comparison website Confused.com is on the move and closing in on MoneySupermarket’s online visibility for insurance-related searches, reveals the latest research from leading independent digital marketing agency, Greenlight. However, with Google having made its entry into the car insurance comparison space, the incumbents will no doubt be keeping watch of what could be deemed a pretty formidable competitor.

According to Greenlight’s report ‘Insurance - Issue 13’ which profiles search behaviour when UK consumers go online to look for insurance-related products, a total of 1.8 million searches were made for home, travel and car insurance in July; a slight increase from the agency’s previous report in April 2012 (1.6 million searches).

In July, searches for car insurance-related keywords were the most popular accounting for 57% of all insurance-related searches with the most queried search term being ‘Car insurance’ (450,000 searches).

Confused.com attained a 77% share of visibility in the organic listings* ranking at position three for the high volume search term ‘car insurance’. Interestingly, since Greenlight’s previous report (April 2012), Confused.com’s share of visibility in the car insurance subsector increased by 44%. This saw it overtake the likes of MoneySavingExpert, CompareTheMarket, Directline, Churchill and TescoBank and ascend from tenth to second place, just behind MoneySupermarket, in Greenlight’s league table showing the most visible car insurance websites in the organic search listings*. 

Since Greenlight’s previous report, Confused.com has likewise seen its share of visibility for overall insurance-related searches increase from 32% in April to 61% in July, ascending from fifth to second place in Greenlight’s league table charting the 20 most visible insurance sites in Natural Search. MoneySupermarket meanwhile continued to dominate with 95%.

Confused.com also moved up the rankings in Greenlight’s integrated search league table ranking the most visible insurance websites across Natural Search and Paid Media**. It shows Confused.com overtook GoCompare to take third place behind TescoBank and MoneySupermarket, which topped the table.

However, with Google’s move this month into car insurance comparison, not only do existing car insurance price comparison sites now have to compete with a credible new entrant, this particular one has some unique advantages, the main being that it can immediately gain visibility through search engine results pages it controls.

Research from Greenlight based on Google’s first day’s visibility (September 11 2012), showed its visibility for car insurance-related searches in sponsored results went from 0% to 75%. According to Greenlight, this equates to Google’s car insurance comparison service being visible for at least 500,000 relevant UK searches per month from this point forward.

Based on this, Greenlight forecasts Google will almost certainly be the second most visible car insurance comparator in paid results for the rest of September, and therein in the position thereafter, assuming its level of integration within search results remains, putting it ahead of some notable names.