Nov 21, 2012 at 12:37am ET by Chris Sherman
The
holiday shopping season is almost upon us. Black Friday comes at the
end of the week, followed by the increasingly popular Cyber Monday.
While there are plenty of deal sites, there also remain traditional
shopping search engines that consumers may wish to use.
Shopping search engines, or perhaps more properly, product and price
comparison services, were one of the first specialized “vertical” search
types to emerge in the early days of the web. The first services, like
Andersen Consulting’s BargainFinder, were “intelligent agents” designed
to grab product info from specific retailer websites – and they were
widely hated and resisted by many online retailers of the day for giving
an “unfair advantage” to the lowest cost provider.
Today, the opposite is true: retailers now recognize the value of
being found online, and comparison shopping search services often have
direct access to real-time product inventory, both online and locally in
brick and mortar stores. If you aren’t familiar with these services,
you owe it to yourself to check them out to save both time and money,
especially during a busy holiday season where competition is fierce and
prices and availability change rapidly.
This guide is designed for shoppers, not sellers. If you are a
retailer and want to know best practices, options and specific tactics
for attracting searchers, take a look at the dozens of articles in
Search Engine Land’s
Search & Retail library.
Finding The Right Stuff: It’s Not Just About Search Anymore
I’ve been writing about shopping search since the late 90s, covering specialized comparison sites like
Shopping.com,
Pricegrabber,
Nextag
and others. These are true shopping search engines, with the familiar
interface and results that are similar to web search engines like
Google.
This year, however, new trends are in play, including social
recommendations and the explosion of buyers accessing retail sites via
mobile devices. Sites like
Pinterest,
while not “pure” shopping search, have become fertile hunting grounds
for people looking to find cool products or the ideal gift. And comScore
reports that 4 in every 5 smartphone users accessed retail content on
their device. Some of that traffic to online retailers is undoubtedly
being directed by comparison shopping or deal apps, and of course, many
mobile apps have significant social components.
Nonetheless,
search is still the predominant way
people find their way to ecommerce sites, according to Hitwise, and
Google undoubtedly makes up a large chunk of that traffic. This is both
from product results appearing in web search results when Google detects
“commercial intent,” and also from people using Google Shopping (more
on that below). But there are other good options, thus, a look at the
most popular “pure” web-based comparison shopping services.
Shopping Search: The Major Players
Shopping search results resemble web search results, but there’s a
key difference: The results consist almost entirely of ads paid for by
retailers. Payment models vary, but it’s important to keep in mind that
what you’re looking at with comparison shopping results isn’t
necessarily a summary the “best” or “most relevant” products but rather
those that have been put forward by paid inclusion programs. So, while
still quite helpful in tracking down what you’re looking for, you’ll
need to look at other factors such as reviews, social recommendations,
price and so on before making any buying decision.
Comparison engines also offer goodies like the ability to store lists
of products you’re interested in, tailoring results so that your
favorite brands appear above others, and many other shopping-specific
perks.
Google Product Search.
Google has been active in comparison shopping for many years now, both
blending product/merchant information into web search results, and
operating standalone comparison shopping verticals with names like
Google Product Search, Google Products and Froogle. In May the company
changed both the name to Google Shopping and its business model,
shifting from a formerly free crawl/feed based system to one monetized
service where merchants have to pay Google for product listings. Google
Shopping is beset with problems, as covered in our
The Mess That Is Google Shopping.
Despite growing pains, Google Shopping is a decent starting point for
any product related search. In addition to seasonally-driven editorial
picks and shortlists, Google Shopping has revived its print-based
catalog search,
letting you “go green” and ditch the annoying paper-based catalogs that
require frequent recycling. You can also get access to Google Offers,
its Groupon-like flash sale service.
Merchants interesting in listing on Google Shopping should check out the
Information for Merchants page.
Shopzilla.
Like Google, Shopzilla is both a longtime veteran and also offers a
broad array of choices for searchers. Shopzilla began life as Bizrate in
1997 and morphed into Shopzilla in 2004. Today the company operates a
number of comparison services, showcasing over 100 million products from
tens of thousands of retailers from sites it operates including
Bizrate,
Beso,
Shopzilla,
Retrevo,
TaDa,
PrixMoinsCher and
SparDeinGeld.
Merchants interesting in listing on Shopzilla should check out the
Merchant Listings & Advertising page.
Nextag. Another
longtime veteran of the comparison shopping space, Nextag goes beyond
product search, helping you find deals on event tickets, travel, and
Groupon-like flash deals. If you’re curious about what other people are
finding interesting, check out
Radar which provides an up-to-date snapshot of what others are searching for and buying.
Since Nextag Nextag offers multiple products and services in results check out the
Advertise With Us page to learn more about how you can list products, events or travel services.
Pricegrabber
likes to brand itself as “the” top-tier comparison service, stating
“our site attracts computer literate, informed buyers, in search of the
best deal they can find.” True – but as a searcher, be aware that the
site is owned and operated by
Experian, the credit reporting company that also owns
Hitwise,
an online traffic analysis group. Bottom-line: You’re likely to get
really good search results from Pricegrabber, but you’ll also find a
significant degree of targeting due to the sheer amount of data Experian
has gathered, both in aggregate and potentially about your web use in
general. If you’re concerned about privacy you may want to use the other
services described here.
Merchants interesting in listing on Pricegrabber should check out the
Experian Site Map page to view all of the varied products and solutions the company offers.
There are many other shopping comparison sites, including eBay’s
Shopping.com,
Bing shopping and others, but start with these – and happy holiday shopping!
