Auto Insurance Quotes Online

Auto Insurance Quotes Online
Most Popular Websites that Compare Car Insurance Rates
Daniel Workman Mar 12, 2009
GEICO, State Farm & Nationwide score the most web visitors in our study; but does that mean that these marketing brands offer consumers the lowest auto insurance rates?
Average U.S. car insurance rates soared 8.5% over the 9-month period from February to October 2008, according to data from RateWatch.
Many consumers face much higher renewal rate increases for their auto insurance. For example, one married office manager from Cleveland recently reported that her annual rate skyrocketed by 86% from US$700 to $1,300 despite an impeccable driving record.
Excessive premium increases have galvanized many drivers to search online for lower-costing car insurance. While thousands of Internet sites offer free car insurance quotes, limited information is available about the web portals that propose new rates to applicants.
This analysis ranks 7 of America’s most popular websites that offer free auto insurance quotes.
Categories for Auto Insurance Quote Websites
To shop online for the best auto insurance deals intelligently, consumers need to first clearly understand the distinct types of car quote websites.Read more: "Auto Insurance Quotes Online: Most Popular Websites that Compare Car Insurance Rates" - http://automotive-&A

Online rate portals fall into 3 categories:
Auto insurance company sites that quote only their rates so they can directly sell their own policies
Online lead aggregators that entice as many applicants as possible to fill out their online request forms; that data is then sold to the local sales agents of auto insurers who then directly contact the applicant before providing their company’s rates
Comparison raters that present the lowest 3 or 4 premium quotes assessed from a group of 12 or more participating direct insurers.
This study summarizes the website quote traffic for America’s 3 largest car insurers (State Farm, Nationwide and GEICO), 3 online lead aggregators (US Insurance Online, CAR Insurance and Online Auto Insurance) as well as a comparison rater (Insurance.com).
Most Popular Online Sites for Car Insurance Quotes
Based on statistics from leading Web traffic monitor Alexa, the following list is sorted by the estimated number of visitors to each website's quote page.
GEICO … 4.2 million online visitors over 3 months (up 9.9%)
State Farm Insurance … 1.9 million (up 5%)
Nationwide … 1.1 million (up 17%)
US Insurance Online … 670,229 (up 42%)
Insurance.com … 508,397 (up 1%)
CAR Insurance … 314,504 (up 22%)
Online Auto Insurance … 105,344 (up 46%).
Note that this ranking focuses on Internet traffic visits to the quoting sites, and excludes the actual number of online quotes or final sales.
GEICO, America’s third largest auto insurance carrier, accounted for 48% of total online visitors in the above statistics. The top 3 insurers combined generated almost 82% of the overall total.
Why Insurance Company Websites are So Popular
Brand-name advertising is one of the key performance drivers that explains why so much web traffic targets GEICO and other large auto insurer sites. GEICO has the best growth record among major auto insurers in part because annual advertising expenditures had mushroomed to US$631 million in 2007.
GEICO spends more on ads than any of its competitors. This may explain why so many American consumers use search engines to find GEICO as the low-cost auto insurance company of choice.
Other large auto insurers also invest hundreds of millions of dollars into brand advertising. Millions of drivers put a high priority on how well-established and financially secure their auto insurance company is. Multi-million dollar marketing campaigns condition those consumers to think of big carriers like State Farm and Nationwide when searching online for auto insurance quotes.
Yet the largest and most profitable auto insurance companies don’t necessarily offer the lowest rates.
Even after an 8% premium discount for GEICO-defined affinity groups, Warren Buffett recently admitted that GEICO rates might not lower the premiums for up to 50% of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders with existing coverage.
Why Online Lead Aggregators are Becoming Unpopular
While the online lead aggregators in our study generated 12.5% of total online visitors, that number understates the vast number of websites that this category of auto quote websites represents.
Consumers who request a rate proposal from the likes of US Insurance Online, CAR Insurance or Online Auto Insurance can expect up to 8 phone calls from local agents from direct carriers. These salespersons will ask more detailed questions and try to sell one of their company’s policies to whoever requested the online quote.
Comparison Raters
Scoring 5.9% of the total number of visitors looking for online quotes, Insurance.com represents a fast-growing segment in the auto insurance marketplace.
Once a single request form is completed, a comparison rater website will quote the lowest car insurance rates from a select group of insurance companies. For example, Insurance.com compares and then extracts the most economical premiums from more than a dozen partner insurance companies such as Progressive, Travelers, 21st Century, Hartford, Liberty Mutual, Met Life and Safeco. Each of the participating carriers at Insurance.com is rated Excellent or Superior by A.M. Best Company, the leading provider of insurance industry ratings.
Consumers immediately see the 4 best-of-breed quotes from the pool of participating direct insurance companies, then can make a decision to purchase one of those policies via Insurance.com as part of a single website visit.
In addition, comparison raters focus on developing user-friendly blogs that educate consumers on topics that help explain how auto insurance works.
Auto Insurance Website Study Findings
Regardless of high web traffic scores, none of the websites in this analysis can guarantee the lowest possible premiums for an individual consumer on any given day.
GEICO, State Farm or Nationwide might offer lower rates than any of Insurance.com’s partner insurance companies. Or vice versa.
Therefore, a prudent consumer will selectively research quotes from one or more individual auto insurance companies as well as a comparison rater.
if (document.getElementById('inline_ads'))
document.getElementById('inline_ads').inner
HTML document.get
ElementById('inline_ads_hidden')
The copyright of the article Auto Insurance Quotes Online in Automotive Insurance is owned by Daniel Workman. Permission to republish Auto Insurance Quotes Online in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.