There’s more changing in the world of Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs for short) this year than I can remember since back to the 99/00 timeframe.
The short-list:
- Amazon Product Ads are doing really well and have come out of nowhere to be a top CSE for many of our retailers. We have more details over at sister-site Amazon Strategies.
- Biztrate (shopzilla’s sister site) – has an entire new UI (details at siter-site CSE Strategies) that highlights coupons.
- Shopping.com has announced tons of new things – tiered pricing, a new feed specification and more. I bet coupons are coming (in the feed spec).
- Microsoft/MSN/Live – MSFT has no fewer than 3-4 CSEs now and they seem to be combining them into one platform.
- PriceGrabber – Coupons and some AOL changes coming
- AOL – Rolling out their own (used to be Pricegrabber partnership) CSE
- NextTag – lots of changes similar to above
- Become.com – actually increasing rates (!?)
- Smarter – feature store and logo opportunities
We have a large team of business folks and engineers at ChannelAdvisor staying on top of these changes from a product perspective and they also have put the details into a white paper that you can download for free here.
