The workings of Google's algorithms can have a huge impact on a site's traffic (and thus, their business). Hitwise took a look at the saga of GoCompare, a car insurance site. I've reproduced the chart they have on the site, which shows traffic numbers before and after Google dropped them down the list of search results:

That's a huge drop. The more interesting question is raised over on Search Engine Roundtable: Why did Google nuke their ranking? This is an area that could stand some transparency, I think.

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