I opened up the mail with the bill from my homeowner’s insurance company – it was a huge increase over last year’s outrageous fee. After leaving a message with my agent, I sat down in front of my laptop and input into Google’s oh-so-easy webpage: ”homeowner’s insurance Merritt Island”.
Do you think that Google served up a wonderful listing of all of the local insurance professionals within 50 miles of me, with phone numbers and links to their websites? No.
Instead, I was served up a listing of the internet’s largest insurance websites that are clearinghouses for agents that pay for the service. Apparently only one agent in my whole county has signed up for this service. The blowhard agent called, and I asked for a quote over the phone. He asked me to come in to his office – I declined. I again asked for his best quote. He declined to give me a quote over the phone. No sale.
This is it!? One blowhard agent calling me and telling me that I need to come to his office so that he can subject me to his hard-sell approach? I know for a fact that there are several insurance agents within 10 miles of me.
I liked the good old days of Googling when I could get a full page of local contractors/service people for my small town. Instead, Google has now determined that “Authority Sites” – sites that get awesome traffic and have many pages should be ranked higher than a local company’s 5 page website.
I disagree. I want a full page of local company’s websites. I also want a search engine that is smart enough to either serve that option up first, or let me decide. Maybe I won’t throw out that recent edition of the yellow pages just yet.