Insolvency Helpline - who are a network of accountants and lawyers - rightly flag up abuses by unregulated debt advisers and even provide links to help debtors complain to enforcement bodies about bad advice.
However, it's one thing to complain about the 'bad advertisers' - and it may even be possible to pick them off one by one until they are regulated by law - but it's another thing to deal with one of the primary sources of those adverts: Google itself !
Significant numbers of debtors find their debt adviser or IVA provider by searching online and most of the warning signs of bad debt advice listed by Insolvency Helpline can be found in the google ads that pop up with every search term related to personal insolvency.
One of the reasons why I've not signed this blog up for google ads is because I would have no control over the content of the ads and providing links from this site to a series of unregulated 'bad' debt advisors would defeat the object of the blog for the sake of a few quid.
Aren't Google in a similar position ?
In the first instance, their credibility relies upon their effectiveness as a search engine but, if the advertising that accompanies that service becomes increasingly questionable, then surely it would also be in Google's best interests to get ahead of the game and clamp down on the 'bad advice' ads before the regulators trundle into view and before googling simply refers in generic terms to 'online searches' rather than the brand leader itself.
There are other search engines.
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