Over a year ago Google began testing a mortgage rate search within their Merchant Search platform in the UK. Not much more then a few blog post here and there discussed the new search tool. Most couldn’t imagine it going much further then just a simple test and the fact that it was circled around generating calls, not specifically data leads, added to the passive concern of so many.

With the new LendingTree suit against Mortech and the revelation of Google’s continued interest in breaking into the mortgage lead generation industry it has proven that the UK test was not performed on a whim and they did have long term intentions. What can be debated is what those intentions truly are. I think to do this we have take a look at more then simply the disheveled mortgage lead generation industry, but the online marketing industry as a whole.

Over the last 5-6 years the online advertising space has been shifting from the typical impression based pricing to click based pricing and more recently to the action based pricing model. In fact, in 2006 Google released the option within Adwords to work within the CPA pricing model, however I frankly don’t know what ever came of it. For that reason I don’t think much of anything ever did, but that may not be the case. Correct me if I a wrong. Regardless, Google noticed the shift and acted. Now, I speculate that they are continuing to act with the UK experiment and the current development of building out a mortgage loan pricing engine of sorts.

How are they going to use the Mortech technology, if LendingTree isn’t able to put a stop to it? Its my guess that they are going to allow people to price out their own loans, possibly allow the consumer to own their loan information or simply sell those inquiries on a per lead price. If this is their intent, my immediate question is where will it end? What will stop Google from running their own lead generation strategies in any other vertical?

I don’t think it is out of the question that Google would continue its push to a CPA based network and continuing to add more control over different verticals at the same time. There are verticals, like mortgage, where Google could easily bring clarity to the consumer as well as consolidate the wide range of quality and transparency issues. A platform similar to the UK merchant search, if positioned highly in the SERPs could easily affect a number of companies generating leads in the mortgage space. My guess, however is that it wouldn’t eliminate the competition completely, but it would make it much smaller. The shift to all encompassing portals with detailed content and information will have to be the norm. Simple arbitrage and landing page type marketing will not be able to compete.

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