Shopping Search Engines
Shopping online? Here's a list of shopping search engines that let you comparison shop and price check or simply locate online stores by category.
Shopping online? Here's a list of shopping search engines that let you comparison shop and price check or simply locate online stores by category.
The shopping search engines below are designed to check prices at various online stores or locate e-commerce outlets by category.
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Major Shopping Search Engines – Other Choices
Specialty Choices – Shopping Search Articles
BizRate
http://www.bizrate.com/
BizRate allows you to search for products from hundreds of online vendors. Features include merchant ratings, reviews, tax and shipping information, as well as a list of your own most searches and recently viewed products. Also powers some of the results provided by Lycos Shopping. An honorable mentionwinner for Best Shopping Search Engine from Search Engine Watch in 2002.
DealTime
http://www.dealtime.com
One of the major comparison shopping search engines on the web that integrates product reviews from Epinions, which it acquired in May 2003. Also owns Shopping.com, which essentially is a clean-search version of DealTime. Winner for Best Shopping Search Engine from Search Engine Watch in 2002. (Review: Inside DealTime’s Shopping Search Engine, Nov. 20, 2002)
Froogle
http://www.froogle.com
Comparison shopping search engine from Google. Gathers listings from crawling the web and accepting product feeds vendors. (Review: Online Shopping with Google’s Froogle, Dec. 12, 2002. Search Engine Watch members can also read the Getting Listed In Frooglearticle, Dec. 17, 2002)
Kelkoo
http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/
Major comparison shopping search engine for the United Kingdom and other European countries. According to the company, 16 out of the top 20 e-commerce sites in the UK are currently advertising through Kelkoo. Advertisers have the opportunity to reach customers in all nine European countries in which Kelkoo operates. (see links at bottom of the Kelkoo home page).
MSN Shopping
http://shopping.msn.com/
MSN Shopping, formerly known as eShop, offers Buyer’s Guides with tips and tools, editor suggestions, and other features beyond the price comparisons offered by other shopping search sites.
mySimon
http://www.mysimon.com/
One of oldest comparison shopping sites on the Web, featuring the ability to search for products from thousands of merchants or browse by product category. An honorable mentionwinner for Best Shopping Search Engine from Search Engine Watch in 2002.
NexTag
http://www.nextag.com/
Comparison shopping search engine with “TruePrices” feature that shows prices including tax and shipping charges, as well as user ratings.
PriceGrabber.com
http://www.pricegrabber.com/
Comparison shopping search engine with ability to see member ratings of products. Available in English or Spanish, including specialized product searches for retailers in Mexico and Brazil. An honorable mentionwinner for Best Shopping Search Engine from Search Engine Watch in 2002.
Yahoo Shopping
http://shopping.yahoo.com/
Yahoo Shopping connects you with thousands of merchants — traditional retail stores, name-brand catalog companies, small boutiques, and specialty vendors. Listings come from merchants hosted in Yahoo Store and through partnerships with others, in addition to online merchants throughout the web. Provides access to user reviews, as well. Winner for Best Shopping Search Engine from Search Engine Watch in 2002. (Review: (Yahoo Launches New Product Search, Sept. 23, 2003)
Buyer’s Index
http://www.buyersindex.com/
Buyer’s Index lists information from thousands of mail order companies, web shopping sites, classified ad sites and other venues. Shows links to merchant ratings from BizRate (see above) and ePublicEye (see below).
Dulance
http://www.dulance.com/
Shopping search engine that pulls back likely product pages from across the web, rather than relying on merchant feeds. It sends your query out to one of four major search engines (Google, AllTheWeb, Inktomi or Teoma) but then should only list pages where you can actually buy a product you are interested in. Product reviews, magazine articles, discussions and opinions are filtered out. The site launched in September 2002.
ePublicEye.com
http://www.epubliceye.com
Collects customer satisfaction reports from shoppers that purchase from online merchants. You can also comparison shop with rated merchants using the service.
PriceScan
http://www.pricescan.com/
Comparison shop in different categories such as books, electronics and sporting goods. Promotes itself as “unbiased” because it does not accept money from vendors to be listed, which is commonplace in the shopping search engine space.
AddAll
http://www.addall.com/
Comparison shop for books across 40 online book stores from one place.
CatalogCity.com
http://www.catalogcity.com/
Catalog City allows you to Order free mail order catalogs or shop online.
Google Catalogs
http://catalogs.google.com/
Search through listings from thousands of mail order catalogs that have been digitized by Google. (Review: Google Launches Catalog Search, Jan. 7, 2002)
Specialoffers.com
http://www.specialoffers.com/
Find special offers, freebies and free trials available online.
Going Shopping? Ask Jeeves for Advice
SearchDay, Nov. 4, 2003
https://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3103381
As the online shopping search space continues to heat up, Ask Jeeves has entered the fray with powerful enhancements to its smart search capabilities that help in all phases of the shopping process.
Yahoo Launches New Product Search
SearchDay, Sept. 23, 2003
https://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3081551
Yahoo’s new product search engine combines the best aspects of the company’s existing shopping platform with new advanced search features, including product information gathered from the entire web.
Dealtime Relaunches as Shopping.com
SearchDay, Sept. 22, 2003
https://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3080171
Shopping search and product review site Dealtime officially changed its name today to Shopping.com, marking another milestone in the fascinating journey of a storied domain name.
DealTime Launches ROI Tool
InternetNews.com, July 17, 2003
http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/2236531
Shopping search engine DealTime is providing a new, free tool so that advertisers can track conversions.
DealTime Lowers Minimum Bid
InternetNews.com, June 16, 2003
http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/2222071
Shopping search engine DealTime has lowered its bid prices to bring in more advertisers.
Shopping Search Engines Fuel Online Sales
SearchDay, June 5, 2003
https://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2214421
Specialized shopping search engines make it easy for searchers to research and buy products — but they’re also a powerful and cost-effective customer acquisition channel for merchants. A report out of the Shopping Search panel at the March 2003 Search Engine Strategies show. A longer, more detailed version of the article that covers shopping search submission and optimization is available for Search Engine Watch members.
Espotting expands Kelkoo deal to 30 channels
netimperative, May 21, 2003
http://www.netimperative.com/cmn/viewdoc.jsp?cat=all&docid=BEP1_News_0000052781
European paid listings provider Espotting has expanded a deal to place its ads in contextually-relevant sections of European shopping search engine Kelkoo.
The New DealTime
May 30, 2003
http://www.emarketer.com/news/article.php?1002260
Why did DealTime acquire Epinions? As this story puts out, because consumer reviews are essential to the buying experience. Paid subscription required to view article.
Shopping Search Engine Users
BizReport, Jan. 29, 2003
http://www.bizreport.com/article.php?art_id=4102
A survey of 1,100 DealTime.com shopping search engine users in late-December 2002 found that the main reason for using shopping search services was to compare prices quickly (73 percent), followed by wanting to compare products (54 percent) and to find stores selling the products they were interested in (45 percent). Story also cites stats showing which search engines sent shopping search engines the most visitors: Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL.
Will Froogle Be a Google for Shoppers?
BusinessWeek, Jan. 14, 2003
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2003/tc20030114_5644.htm
Google’s shopping search engine gets taken for a test ride, and while Business Week writer Alex Salkever acknowledges the service is still under development, he comes away far more impressed with competing services NexTag and PriceGrabber
Searching for New Year Cheer
SearchDay, Dec. 31, 2002
https://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2161501
Looking for that perfect bottle of bubbly to help ring in the new year? These databases help you make sense of the complex world of wine and champagne.
Getting Started with Shopping Search
SearchDay, Nov. 19, 2002
https://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2161231
Online shopping is both safe and satisfying, if you start by doing a bit of detective work on both the products you want to buy and the online merchants who sell them.