Is this the beginning of BeatThatQuote's demise?

The insurance industry has been watching Google’s insurance aggregator BeatThatQuote with interest since it bought the site in March 2011.

Some in the industry suspected that Google could build the aggregator up and usurp the dominance of the big four price comparison websites: Moneysupermarket.com, GoCompare.com, Comparethemarket.com and Confused.com.

However, the Google aggregator was born with a whimper rather than a roar. Very little happened publicly until September last year, when BeatThatQuote became the second most visible price comparison site the day after it launched. It is now the most visible website for the word ‘insurance’ after paid-for positions.

Such prominence attracted the attention of the European Commission last May, when it accused the search giant of using its internet prominence to bump its aggregator up the search rankings.

Google will now be forced to alter how it displays its search results or face EU sanctions, according the Financial Times today. These sanctions could take the form of anti-trust charges aimed at creating greater competition in the aggregator market, according to EU competition chief Joaquin Almunia.

Although the EU did not single out Google’s aggregator for criticism, it will almost definitely be forced to comply with the wider EU requirements.

This will deliver a blow to BeatThatQuote, which will then be required to fight for search engine rankings on the same basis as the other price comparison websites.

But it will definitely be good news for the traditional big four aggregators, which must be crowing at the EU announcement.