Google has stopped Irwin Mitchell from appearing in its search results, apparently because of the firm's marketing tactics.
The personal injury firm's paid-for advert still pops up if people search for its name. But Irwin Mitchell doesn't appear in Google's normal search results. Nor, at the time of going to press, does it appear when users type in key terms like "Medical Negligence Solicitors", which used to bring up Irwin
Mitchell first. Now Google suggests rival PI firm Slater & Gordon instead. Ouch.
An insider tells RollOnFriday this has created "massive panic" in the firm because, as its BD Director said in December, a "significant proportion" of Irwin Mitchell's personal injury business flows through its website. Or it did, until Google turned off the tap.
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Irwin Mitchell losing at the internet yesterday |
IM's headache appears to be due to an, ahem, innovative digital marketing campaign which involved spraying the web with links to the firm in spammy blogs, comments and forum posts, such as this:
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In the past, the more links there were to a website from other sites, the higher it ranked on Google. But when Google noticed that vendors of fake Louboutins and penis enlargement solutions, and, erm, a PI law firm, seemed to be using such strategies to artificially inflate their prominence, it changed its algorithm and started to penalise the guilty parties by booting them off its search results.
A spokesman for Irwin Mitchell recommended using Bing instead said, "we are aware of the situation and are working closely with our digital agency to deal with it".
Comments
On a day management ought to be congratulating themselves on not retaining the Golden Turd award they will be trying to find a way to appease Google. In the meantime Slater & Gordon are hoovering up the internet based PI leads.
This smacks of a lack of focus and control at senior management level and the retirement of key individuals at the firm seems to be taking its toll.
IM or is that I'm, made unbelievable moves into digital early on they were one of the first to look at PPC and pushed SEO, and nothing like this happened, perhaps the other agency played by the rules.
Seems like the new agency did a great job initially but were caught out by Google, the pressure to get to number one is massive and so is the pressure to use dodgy techniques is massive.
I wonder how much money this is costing though? Bet it will have an affect on the bottom line.
19:32
At some point someone will have to take hold of the issue, this is costing them, any manager / director who oversees such an historical bollocks should walk, they have no credibility left.
This is a Ratner moment, the Hoover offer disaster, it's 'New Coke', it's OMG,what a mess, who the hell can I blame! Reputations in tatters.
All these negative comments are for people who probably work in smaller and not at the same grade as we are.
Yes a lot of the PI work comes via the insurance network, but that is more low value PI RTA work. The real money making work is the clin neg work and a massive amount of that is driven by searches online, it's why PPC for these terms cost between £10 and £100 that's each click! If a cases is worth £90k, worth it.
Getting back on Google 3 to 6 months usually. IM will be losing about £750k a week on organic, so 3 months about £9m or about 4% of turnover, now that would cost someone their job in the real world, being a law firm the BD director will blame someone else rather than doing the right thing.
It is a hell of a lot of work, it's cleaning up the back link profile, checking all the links that point to their site, making sure they are from good quality and relivant sites.
Sad thing is IM are sacking some of the BD team to try and keep revenue close to £2m, they will have to lay a lot off to save the £9m they are probably going to lose.
I do feel sorry for all the partners knowing that they will probably be 20% down, good job it's not a plc.
If I worked there I would want a response from the BD Director, what is being done, this is eating into my kids private school fees for Christ sake, if this was a football team and the manager had screwed up so badly he would be out.
Can anyone remember the days when people took responsibility for messing up, it seems like a long time ago when someone held up their hands, accepted the blame and did the right thing.
Partners at IM what would a 8% drop mean to you? You won't hit £200m this year, not without cooking the books in some way.
Head of BD, he won't be bothered, he hasn't got a clue, he is like that bloke from Father Ted... The partners wont get rid of him, it will be the ecomms head that will take this one, Teflon Powell never lets anything stick to him. The lights are on but no one at home.