Google is risking treading on more of its advertisers toes by offering email alerts to let you know of changes in credit card rates.
Whilst we’ve known about Google’s comparison ads for credit cards for a while, Andrew Girdwood reports that they’re going a step further (and some might say another step too far), by offering email updates for interest rates.
Google’s comparison ads are only triggered on certain types of search, such as “best credit cards”. The top result (circled in red) is a Google ad, which pushes all the other credit card advertisers down:
Click on the Google Comparison Ad, and you’ll be given a list of credit cards – in the bottom left, there’s a new link offering you the chance to “Get rate updates by email”:
And if you click that link, you get to enter your email address and select how often you wish to receive updates:
This is yet another move by Google into the territory of some of its biggest advertisers, which will no doubt wind them up. Of course, the service itself relies on feeds of information from similar advertisers, so where some are losing out, others will gain. However, Google is unlikely to be making less money from this than just by serving normal credit card ads, so margins will be squeezed.
I’ve signed up for daily updates, so let’s see how often they do come through and what exactly they’re going to offer from this service.
Do you think this provides a better user experience? Ultimately that is all that really matters.