Posts Tagged ‘comparison shopping engines’

One less free comparison shopping engine

Monday, June 8th, 2009

With Bing causing quite a stir in the search engine world, my hope was that we’d get another free massive e-commerce traffic generator like Google Product Search. Things have been mysteriously on hold with Live Product Search, one of the few completely free product search engines internet retailers can submit to.

Alas, my hopes were dashed when Product Search was announced discontinued along with the Bing search engine release. No more MSN Product Search / Windows Live Product Search / Live Product Search / Bing Product Search. Bing is pushing their Cashback comparison shopping engine instead, which used to be Live Cashback, which used to be Jellyfish.

Whew. On second thought, I’m glad it’s been discontinued.

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3 strategies for listing your products on comparison shopping engines

Monday, March 24th, 2008

When it comes to listing on the comparison shopping engines, it is important to have a strategy, especially as a small merchant. Small companies like mine do not have the marketing budget of Amazon.com or Buy.com, yet we must compete with them anyway. As I see it, there are several strategies to listing products.

Note: Refer to this comprehensive list of comparison shopping engines to find where to list your products.

The Free Strategy

Every merchant that sells products online should be using this method. My company gets a steady flow of sales from Google Product Search and we don’t pay a dime for those leads. If you don’t have the time to properly submit your product feed or optimize for the free feeds, use a data feed management service like SingleFeed or GoDataFeed.

As well, keep your eyes peeled for comparison sites like Ciao.com that offer free clicks for a certain period of time. Free traffic can never be a bad thing, right?

Sites that fit this strategy: Google Product Search, TheFind.com, Live Product Search

The Niche Strategy

A surefire way to see your conversion rate increase is to seek out comparison shopping sites that are specifically tailored to the products you sell. I reviewed HealthPricer.com recently and noted that their navigation for health products is much better than Shopzilla’s, for example. If you sell a product that can be gifted to someone, FindGift.com and Gifts.com are excellent choices. Sell hardware? List on BobVila.com. The number of comparison sites is growing, and many of them are selling to niche markets. Get on those.

Of course, this goes both ways. Don’t list on sites that have nothing to do with your product line. A company that primarily sells to businesses likely wouldn’t do that well on those gift comparison sites.

Sites that fit this strategy: Like.com, FindGift.com, Gifts.com, HealthPricer.com

The Shotgun Strategy

If your products are less niched or if you have a broad product offering, you may opt to list on as many comparison engines as you can and see what sticks. After all, on most engines you only pay when traffic is sent your way. Generally this is not the most effective strategy, but if you are optimizing for the comparison engines and tracking your conversion rate, you should realize a positive return on investment.

Sites that fit this strategy: Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com, Pricegrabber.com, Nextag.com

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List of comparison shopping engines

Wednesday, December 26th, 2007

NOTE: Last updated February 4th, 2008.

Recently I took up the task of managing my company’s comparison shopping feeds. These comparison search engines like NexTag, Shopping.com, and Shopzilla are a great way to get your company’s products some more face time with the buying consumer.

Since I spent a good amount of time tracking down all of the comparison shopping engines, I figured a good first post for my blog would be to list the engines I know of, as well as classify their model. I hope you find this useful!

LIST OF COMPARISON SHOPPING SITES

    Cost Per Click Comparison Engines

  1. Shopping.com – the market-leader, owned by eBay and also runs DealTime.
  2. Shopzilla – also runs BizRate.
  3. PriceGrabber – powers an impressive array of other comparison shopping websites like CNET, MySimon.com and AOL Shopping.
  4. NexTag – one of my personal favorites.
  5. Smarter.com – A smaller player that is still worth placing on.
  6. StreetPrices.com – a really small comparison search engine that hasn’t seen much development lately.
  7. Yahoo! Shopping – Surprisingly does not give my company too many click-throughs, despite being the most trafficked comparison shopping engine.
  8. PriceRunner.com – did not carry hardly any of my company’s products. Probably like StreetPrices.com.
  9. FindGift.com – For gift ideas. Shoddy user-interface.
  10. Gifts.com – For gift ideas, with a better user-interface and more traffic than FindGift.
  11. Like.com – visual shopping. Pretty much completely for apparel.
  12. PriceFish.com – Low traffic, but a comparison shopping engine nonetheless.
    Free Comparison Shopping Engines

  1. Google Product Search – absolutely every e-commerce site should submit to this. Free with quite a few incoming clicks.
  2. Live Product Search – currently difficult to submit products.
    Cost Per Sale or Cost Per Action Comparison Sites

  1. Jellyfish - Microsoft snatched this fast-growing engine quickly. Cost per sale isn’t new, but the way Jellyfish does it is.
  2. Amazon.com – transaction is made at Amazon, and fees range from 8%-15% plus a monthly fee.
  3. Shop.com – like Amazon, sale happens on their site. They charge referral fees.
  4. Underbid.com – Lags behind other CPA models. Still, free clicks until a sale is made.
  5. Priceforsure.com – Their traffic is below Underbid.
    Crawler Comparison Search Engines

  1. TheFind.com - free, but you cannot set up an account. You can submit your site to be crawled.
  2. Become.com – used to be solely a crawler site; now one can sign up for a CPC account as well. If you are ranking well, don’t bother. UPDATE: Looks like they get their listings from Shopping.com as well.
  3. BuyersEdge.com – quite a bit like Become.com. Same rules apply (except maybe not the Shopping.com part).
  4. Pronto.com – Ditto.
  5. Pricescan.com – Crawler or manual listing, looks free.
    Other Comparison Search Engines

  1. SortPrice.com – pay a monthly fee no matter the number of clicks. Only makes sense if you anticipate quite a few clicks per month.
  2. Priceleap.com – appears to be a reasonable monthly fee with unlimited clicks. Traffic is really low, though.
  3. Kelkoo – the United Kingdom comparison shopping engine. Quite a market if you sell internationally.
  4. ciao.co.uk – premier European comparison shopping site. Cost per click model.
  5. pricesavvy.co.uk – European comparison shopping, free registration and listing.
  6. pricecheck.co.za – A South Africa comparison shopping engine, not sure of cost structure.
  7. jump.co.za – Another South Africa shopping engine – cost per click.
  8. Tolmol.com – Specific to India but open to the world – cost per click.
  9. ShareASale - affiliate marketing, gets others to sell your products for you. Fee types vary.
  10. ShopLocal.com

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