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Online Shopping EnginesComparison Shopping Search Backlash - GmbmG"(Give Me Back My Google) automatically strips out a ton of affiliate spam from Google. The results are quite revealing. -Battelle" Silly, silly, silly. This site is nothing more than a jump page for an advanced search query. Not that there is anything wrong with that. No, the sillyness is that they do not strip out the real crappola, they only strip out the top-tier shopping engines, mainly from the UK. -site:kelkoo It is a crude game of whack-a-mole. Get rid of the top-tier shopping engines and you are left with... a zillion second-tier shopping engines... not to mention the real affiliate spam that has no functionality. Still, the sentiment will probably ring true for many web searchers, who feel overwhelmed by commercialization of mixed-intent search results. If that is the case, there are real tools for the job...
Comparison Shopping Search Backlash - GmbmG
CrowdStorm on Social Shopping Featuritis"There are quite a few features our competitors entering the social shopping space (I say competitors but they’re not really doing something on this scale) are implementing which we look at and just think “why?”" The Feature Arms Race in Social Shopping August 14 Probably too early to do a roundup of the social shopping sites. Does anyone think those sites are already too feature-tastic? In limited testing, I find them... a very disjointed experience.
CrowdStorm on Social Shopping Featuritis
How Many Shopping Engines Do We Need?IAC finally launched Pronto to a lukewarm reaction. Maybe it is because many people are none too keen on toolbars. But I have to wonder, is this market reaching a saturation point? (thinking out loud...) I mean, c'mon, Altavista, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, Northen Light... oops, wrong list. Currently, the U.S. market has about a dozen large, general-purpose shopping engines. (Depending how you define each word the the previous sentence.) Add a comparable number of price-only comparison engines. No telling how many niche shopping engines are out there, under the radar. Plus a zillion toolbars, co-brands, and assorted riffraff. From a macro-economic perspective, is this an effecient use of resources? Two examples from the experiences of a frustrated comparison shopper: (1) Product attributes. In many categories, several engines will offer unique filters, but no site has comprehensive filters. So, hypothetically, if you want a product that tastes great, you can search that on Site A, and if you want a product that is less filling, you can search that on Site B, but if you want a product that both tastes great and is less filling, you are shit out of luck, sorry. (2) User reviews. What happens when there are a couple dozen user reviews on the Web, but they are scattered over a dozen different shopping engines? The "one-stop shoppers" settle for incomplete information. The die-hard comparison shoppers waste too much time. Everyone in-between loses on both counts, to varying degrees. However, the efficiency of the comparison shopping process exceeds any inefficiency in the comparison shopping market. I'm guessing... Good news ahead for major shopping engines, who do not need to be perfect, just better than other shopping processes. Good news ahead for niche shopping engines, who can get closer to perfect in their market, and build a tighter community. Not as much good news for newer sites that are more general than specific, too broad to be deep, i.e. price-only engines. Probably business as usual until one of the major engines uncorks a bottle of network-effect whoopass. Then it is game on.
How Many Shopping Engines Do We Need?
Why I Don't Use Shopping Comparison SitesWell, not me, I've been known to do a wee bit of comparison shopping, but that is the title of a post from Rob Hof of The Tech Beat at businessweek.com. It is a good counterbalance to the industry's mini-buzz from the holiday season and a year full of acquisitions. see: Why I (Mostly) Don't Use Shopping Comparison Sites (warning: "plugfestivus" in the comment section) A lot of people have asked me when the comparison shopping space is going to blow up, come into its own, tear the roof off, or whatever you want to call it. Growth is a given. But how much growth, how soon, and is there a tipping point? I suppose at the very high level, you can look at it from two major angles -- 1) people will be able to reap more benefits from comparison shopping as they get more familiar with the functionality that is available 2) new, transformational, low-learning-curve functionality help everyone to be more effective/effecient shoppers. But I digress. Here's my take on Rob's arguments. (1) The Amazon.com/eBay argument: Not every purchase requires comparison shopping, thank goodness. Still, I think comparison shopping sites have the opportunity to add value to the shopping process for a much wider range of products than it has in the past. More attributes for "non-traditional" categories could, in some cases, save hours and immeasurable frustration, but the problem is you need a critical mass of attributes for the experience to be even the slightest bit useful. (2) The familiar vendors argument: I think this argument gets stronger with each passing year. Initially, price sites were hot. Now pricing is commodity, more or less. The thing that never goes out of style is a more "holistic" comparison shopping experience, with more emphasis on selecting the product that will maximize long-term satisfaction. (3) The non-gadget buyer argument: Most of these sites started with gadgets, but many of them have been moving quickly into home, appare, etc. Even if these do not require heavy attribution (but they DO, they DO), we should see more product selection, more user reviews, maybe even new ways to shop for visually-oriented products. (4) The clumsy filters argument: See, it is not just me who says this! :-) (5) The lack of time argument: I am a glutton for punishment on this topic, probably more than any sane person. I've had to spend hours just to get anywhere close to consensus on product selection. If I was Joe Sixpack, I would throw my hands in the air and try someone equally scientific, like the "Eenie Meenie Minie Moe" method, and save a metric load of time. While time is a serious limitation to comparison shopping, it could also remain one of the biggest growth areas. For every "X" minutes saved in the shopping process, these sites becomes affordable, timewise, to "X" more people. Rob ends with this question, "Still, I know a lot of people use these sites, or so the traffic numbers suggest. So tell me: Why?" For me, this kind of goes back to one of my original posts. When everything comes together perfectly with comparison shopping, it is amazing. When you've had the ideal shopping experience in one area, you tend to crave that same kind of experience with every category. The more you know about all the comparison shopping options, the larger the potential effectiveness gap between the online "CSEs" and other methods of shopping/comparison. Even if I'm almost certain the comparison shopping engines are not up to snuff in a particular category, it is worth a look, eh?
Why I Don't Use Shopping Comparison Sites
ConsumerReports mini-comparisonConsumerReports puts the comparison shopping engines to the test: * Overview and Recommendations but this kind of "black box" study lacks too much in the way of details, IMO.
ConsumerReports mini-comparison
Don't Buy Junk! - dontbuyjunk.com (beta)
At first, I thought it might be the arch-enemy of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, but no, it turns out to be a product recommendation site, and an interesting one at that. The design is clean and functional, and it looks like they have put a lot of thought into the early stages of the buying process. I'll try to look at this in more detail soon. Until then, here are some links: Home | Technology | Management | example: Digital Cameras
Don't Buy Junk! - dontbuyjunk.com (beta)
Gifts.com Review at ConnectMe NetworksConnectMe Networks talks about Gifts.com and IAC/Jeeves, plus a seven-slide review of the Gifts.com. The blog as described in an earlier post as "how shopping is likely to change over the next few years." Shopping + Future = I had to subscribe. (XML)
Gifts.com Review at ConnectMe Networks
Shopping Search Plug-ins for FirefoxBy now, many serious searchers have found their way to the Firefox web browser. Among other things, Firefox allows you add your favorite search engines to the search box in the upper-right corner of the browser. Not only can you add general web search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Jeeves, you can also add site search engines for your most-used sites. Most of the major shopping engines have a plug-in, whether they know it or not. Here is a list of shopping engines with plug-ins (scroll down for the shopping category), including Bizrate, Froogle, Kelkoo, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com, Yahoo Shopping. Perhaps the most well-known shopping engine to not make the list was NexTag, but that could be because the list stopped updating several months ago.
Shopping Search Plug-ins for Firefox
Shopping Search Week 2004 at Search Engine Watch (3 of 4)Day #3 - summaries of NexTag, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com/Dealtime and Yahoo Shopping.
Shopping Search Week 2004 at Search Engine Watch (3 of 4)
Shopping Search Week 2004 at Search Engine Watch (2 of 4)Day #2 - summaries of BizRate/Shopzilla, Froogle and MSN Shopping.
Shopping Search Week 2004 at Search Engine Watch (2 of 4)
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