CarInsurance.com for the Organic Traffic — Quinstreet Bought

Organic traffic and following keys to $49.7 million purchase.

I just finished listening to the Quinstreet conference call that discussed the buyout of CarInsurance.com. As with the firm’s previous media acquisitions, the firm stated the value comes primarily from the organic traffic the site receives and how that converts into leads.

Also like some previous acquisitions, CarInsurance.com was previously attached to an insurance agency. The agency will be stripped out; Quinstreet only cares regarding using the site for lead generation.

CarInsurance.com gets a lot of organic traffic from Google. I just searched for “Texas Car Insurance” and the first two results are for the site. The first three results for “Florida Car Insurance” lead to CarInsurance.com.

On the call, the firm stated the site has a “long history of building a good following among insurance consumers” and that this has been recognized by search engines.

So I would break this down into three types of organic traffic:

1. Direct search type-in
2. Repeat visitor type-in
3. Search engine traffic

The search engine traffic is the largest amount of traffic, but the non-search engine traffic is more valuable. It includes both direct search type-ins, which will convert very well for this type of site, as well as repeat visitors who have used the site in the past. The type-in’s don’t go away and don’t rely on Google’s algorithm for longevity.