Let's Get Social - Finding Answers Online: Social Networks Vs. Search Engines, Jordan Kasteler, Search Engine Land (Dec 14)
People will probably research a product through a search engine, but not buy until they've received recommendations and opinions from their social network - either direct friends or reviews from Epinions or Yelp.
"People use the Internet to find information because in many cases, it provides instant results. However, what method you use to find information depends on what you are looking for. If you are using the Internet to make a purchase during that browsing session, you would most likely utilize a search engine and input keywords such as “buy”, “purchase”, or “order” followed by the item you want. This is the purchasing stage.
If a user is in the information seeking stage, then they could also utilize their social networks to receive recommendations and opinions on a product or experience they are curious about."
Search engines are trying to bridge the two. Bing, as an example, added networks from Facebook.
3 Important Ecommerce Trends To Watch, Adam Audette, Search Engine Land (Nov 29)
Time for predictions - three trends for 2011.
+ consumers are looking for deals
+ more video and visual search ( I will love to see it but if this is true why did so many visual search engines close?) Of interest:
"Statistics cited by Bing note that web visitors are able to process information up to 30% more rapidly when it’s provided in a combination of video and text, rather than text alone. Additionally, 65% of us are visual learners, and more likely to digest information and learn from it, in a visual form. Most types of ecommerce, notably apparel and products suited to emotional and personal tastes, excel with visual additions."
+ Bing needs to fix some technical SEO issues.
Big brands dominate Google search results, Pandia (Sept 18)
This doesn't look good --
Planet Ocean’s Search Engine News found that Google, “Instead of allowing each company to have only two possible listings they can now have up to ten! Google has shown in the past that they favor brands but to give up every listing above the fold to one is a huge step.”
This is fine if your only meaning for the word target is the American retail company, and your only intention is to shop. On the other hand - and in defense of Google, if the only keyword entered is target, lit's likely that the searcher really does want the store.
There is a difference in results between the US google.com and google.ca . At Google.com the first four results today) are from the target.com domain, followed by one Wikipedia article on the company and the Target facebook sites.
Google.ca has only the main Target site and the Wikipedia entry (indicating that at least Google knows Target is not in Canada).
But, back to Pandia's point - this weighting of the big retail firms at the top may crowd out smaller businesses - thus making the work of SEO people even harder.
It also concludes with "The main problem, though, is that searchers do not benefit from this strong focus on enterprise and shopping related search results."
Google adding more user product reviews, Tom Krazit, Relevant Results (Apr 21)
Google will add user product reviews from Bazaarvoice that will appear in search, as ads, and in Google Products. This is part of the new Google Product Reviews Program
Top five tips on ways to safely shop online , Ian Harvey, Globe and Mail (Mar 25)
It's hard work protecting your credit card at anytime - and maybe more so online. This article presents five points.
+ "keep it real" - meaning know the company - and I would add the product. If this is a company you don't know, do some searches to see if there is anything scammy about the product or complaints about the company.
+ Use PayPal as the intermediary where possible. Get securecode protection.
+ Get a pin generator - now it gets complicated.
+ Read the fine print.
+ Don't leave codes and numbers lying around.
It's Google Friend Connect vs. Facebook Connect Ian Paul, PC World (Dec 3)
Micropayment movement seems to be growing. We might see real use of it in 2010 as news sources erect paywalls. Several have talked about it: Murdoch's media empire, New York Times, Time, Conde Nast. There has been talk before, but now there are micropayment mechanisms in Facebook and Google Checkout to make it possible - as well as Amazon and Paypal.
"Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect could easily be linked to Google Checkout and Facebook's payment platform making it easier to pay for things online. If paywalls, micropayments, and subscriptions are coming back to the Web in force, then a digital wallet that you can take with you to any site and pay for items using one-click access will be a critical component for success. These identities would become even more useful if they could be used across most online retailers as well."
Nearly Half of Canadians Worry About Mistakenly Buying Counterfeit Goods Online this Holiday Season - Microsoft Canada helps Canadians shop smart online with a series of tips, Canada Newswire (Dec 2)
"Seventy-five per cent of Canadians will shop online this holiday season, but nearly half are concerned about mistakenly buying counterfeit goods like toys, clothing, video games and software. Microsoft Canada Co. captured Canadians' views on counterfeiting in a national survey conducted by The Strategic Counsel, and found that 40 per cent of consumers are not confident they know how to ensure they are buying genuine software.* "
What to do? Check into the product and company before buying anything. Tips on this article don't say this - but run a search on the product name and complaint OR fraud. When searching watch for the types of page the product turns up on - some may look like a spammer site - all ads, many testimonials, promise of big deals - beware of all of these - look for professional sites. But mainly, sticky with companies you trust.
Ask launches Ask Deals for bargain hunters Tom Krazit, Webware (Oct 5)
US searchers have a new reason to use Ask.com - the coupons.
"Ask Deals is expected to launch Tuesday, blending links to coupons from a plethora of online coupon aggregation sites alongside search results for certain types of queries, such as "cheap jeans" or "plasma TV deals," said Scott Garell, president of Ask Networks. There will also be a link to a Deals page off the Ask.com home page, which will have a "deal of the day" type promotion as well as links to other opportunities for savings."
The Ask.com welcome page is now festooned with Deals - and a link to best deals. I question whether this will help it improve its share of market - likely to lose more than gain.
Introducing Intelligent Search with Meaningo, AltSearchEngines (Sept
Meaningo - it's for shopping - but might be interesting for semantic search capabilities.
"Meaningo Technology was specially designed to overcome these two handicaps by giving the user an easy way to first define and then refine and control the affinity quality of the search while providing very accurate search results even for complex queries. As a result. Meaningo Technology increases the effectiveness of online search on the internet and could in the future do the same in the cellular domain."
However, as valuable as the images that Meaningo presents are, it didn't help me find part for propane lamps.
The terrors of Craigslist
by David Futrelle . Money and Main Street (Aug 8)
Opening paragraph: "So is Craigslist a handy free alternative to newspaper classifieds — a sort of virtual flea market and community bulletin board — or is it a haven for criminals and creeps looking to rip you off or worse?"
We all know people who have bought or sold through Craigslist and been happy with the results - we have done so ourselves (I haven't yet).
But as in all spaces on the Internet there are dangers - fraud to begin with.
This writer makes a good point - that it would be safer to shop at the e-commerce /shopping sites of eBay, Amazon and Half.com eBay and Half.com where you are "dealing with sellers who are accountable for their actions; they have reputations (and feedback scores) to protect."
Shopping Search 2.0: Finding Deals & Coupons On Twitter by Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Jun 25)
Of course people tweet about shopping deals they find, and of course there are search tools to surface that intel and generally help out in finding things to buy. "Here’s a look at three companies that are turning Twitter into a new kind of shopping search engine."
12 online tools for price-conscious shoppers, by Don Reisinger, Webware (May 14)
Reviews 12 online comparison shopping sites. I haven't looked at these for years. Good list. Top three were Yahoo Shopping, Hawkee, and RefundPlease. Likely all for US shoppers but Canadians can use for research.
AOL Overhauls Comparison Shopping Site, Mark Walsh, MediaPost (Apr 14)
AOL Shopping is worth a look.
"AOL on Wednesday will formally relaunch its comparison shopping hub with a recession-conscious emphasis on online bargains and coupons and a group of new advertisers including Barnes & Noble and Sears. "
10 Craigslist Tips for Power Users Brennon Slattery, PC World (Mar 26)
If you use Craigllist for finding apartments, jobs, or just things these search tips and tools might be useful. The very first tip is to use the Advanced Search page to limit to the craigslist in your city, and to include as search terms such good stock phrases as "good condition".
Be sure to read the section 9. Sidestep Scams and Useless Add-Ons to learn how to avoid being ripped off.
20+ tools for price watching and protecting by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Mar 10)
These are all price watch tools - "Most only work on Amazon.com, but a few will keep an eye on the entirety of the Web to let you know about sales, price drops, and increases." - and they are for the US buyer.
In times of thrift, a helping hand for online shoppers by Matt Hartley, Globe and Mail (Mar 3)
Wishabi.ca is a social shopping engine for shoppers in Canada "that aims to change the way Canadians spend their cash online." It has the some big stores: Hudson's Bay Co, Sears, Indigo, Amazon.
Of interest: "Canadians spent about $13-billion (Canadian) online in 2007, according to Statistics Canada." - and this is low compared to other countries.
Shoppers at Wishabi will see deals from Canada and the United States.
"The site is essentially an online shopping mall. Users can browse for deals and compare prices of products offered by a variety of retailers. Using sophisticated algorithms that pull in data from participating retailers in Canada and the U.S., Wishabi converts the numbers to Canadian dollars and then ranks the deals based on several criteria, including price, warranties and customer service. For U.S. outlets, shipping fees, duties and taxes are baked into the price."
Maybe - but will need more deals in more product lines and more inviting suggestions and ways to navigate. I think I'd rather have a true comparison shopping engine.
World Wide Web: Land of Free Stuff by Douglas MacMillan, special report in Business Week Online (Nov 19)
E-Commerce may be soaring, but there are still many ways to get free services and products from the Internet. This article shows how - and includes a slide show of 101 Best Web Freebies (45 slides).
"This year, e-commerce is projected to be a $259 billion business, up 18% from 2006, according to market researcher Forrester Research (FORR). That's a mind-numbing figure, but it doesn't mean everything online has a price tag. The list of free things you can get is as nearly extensive as the Internet itself, and includes everything from circus tickets to booze, including golf lessons, gift cards, pets, even a college education. "
Also - 2008: The Year of Living Cheaply (Dec 10)
"From ditching their cable subscriptions to opting for "staycations," many Americans found ways to cut back during the past year
Yotify: A Social Search Engine, by Stephen Arnold, Search It (Oct 15)
Arnold followed up on an article from MIT Technology Review -- Making Search Social- A new engine can turn a difficult search into a communal quest - about Yotify, a search engine for a mix of social searching and sending out "scouts" to monitor partner sites.
If I'm reading this right - he sees some possibility for it as a consumer tool (but, I ask, how many social scouting tools do people need to buy more things?), but much more if Yotify could be converted into an enterprise system - where (I presume) there would be the networks, common interests, and need to be alerted about products and programs.
"Procurement teams and information technology professionals looking to deploy a search system that works may find the Yotify.com technology applied to a regulated industry like pharmaceuticals just the cure for ails information access."
Shopping Search Engines, The Next Generation Bastien Duclaux, AltSearchEngines (June 4)
Actually a promo for Twenga - European shopping search engine for "Price comparison, vouchers, consumer reviews and great deals"
"At Twenga, we’re already taking a different approach to that of our competitors as we rank search results naturally, in line with our algorithms. In addition, we’re working on a review aggregation service that identifies expert reviews on specialist websites by key words and publishes them on our site, providing our users with intelligent information that will help them come to a purchasing decision."
Playing With Live Search Cashback by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (May 21)
Microsoft is getting headlines for offering to pay cash for people to search for and buy products through Live Search. Barry Schwartz works through an example of looking for umbrellas.
Google Product Search Gets More Useful Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Apr 28)
Something new for Google Product Search --
"Now, for some searches, Google groups store results, shows reviews on Google and also shows product specifications."
A New Tool From Google Alarms Sites New York Times via CNBC (Mar 24)
A short time ago Google added a search box to search results from major companies or sources - eg search for Canadian Tire, and Google shows a link to the home page and a search box. This makes it a little easier for the user, but the retailer is not pleased.
"The problem, for some in the industry, is that when someone enters a term into that secondary search box, Google will display ads for competing sites, thereby profiting from ads it sells against the brand. The feature also keeps users searching on Google pages and not pages of the destination Web site."
It can affect the retailer's knowledge of the customer (cookies that contain buying history), and how it can respond to that search.
Amazon and a couple of others have asked for the feature to be turned off.
In the land of shoppers, online Americans find that online shopping is convenient and save time, but they are worried about sending personal
or credit card information over the internet.
PEW surveyed US online users in September - Online Shopping: Internet users like the convenience but worry about the security of their financial information [pdf - 32 pages]
78% of online Americans agree that shopping online is convenient. 68 % say that shopping online saves time. 75% do not like sending personal or credit card information over the internet. 66% of online Americans have at one time bought a product onlineIf people felt safer about their personal information, found it more convenient and a time saver, many more would shop online (increasing to 68 or 73% - perhaps higher).
81% have used the Internet to research products.
30% have posted a comment or review about a product or service.
32% have rated a product or service17% have bought content
32% have used online classifieds like Craigslist
Message to financial institutions and all merchants: How are you going to make online purchasing transactions more secure?
Summary of main points in Pew: Americans Increasingly Shop Online But Still Fear Identity Theft Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Feb 14)
Amazon Quietly Launches Product Ads; Secretly Wants to Become a Shopping Search Engine. Erik Schonfeld, TechCrunch (Feb 7)
"Anyone who searches for a product on Amazon today will find either products that Amazon sells or ones that its merchant affiliates sell. Now Amazon is saying that any Websites that is selling something related to its product categories can buy an ad that will show up as a highly targeted product search result, along with all the items on Amazon and its merchant sites. What’s more, Websites won’t need to pay Amazon an affiliate fee or register as a merchant."
Yahoo to introduce structured Web search By John Ribeiro, IDG News Service
November 27, 2007
Yahoo is planning on making search for products more structured, employing, by the sound of it, the faceted navigation they have had for shopping for some time.
"If a user enters the words "mobile phone" in the search box, for example, apart from throwing up the usual search results containing the word "mobile phone," Yahoo's new structured search will also offer pull down menus with choices including mobile phone brands, technologies, and specifications, and other features, said Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Yahoo's vice president of research for Europe and Latin America, in an interview."
No date given for when we can expect to see this.
EBay Launches U.S. Site for Classifieds , AP via North County Times (July 8)
EBay's classified site, covers 220 cities in 50 states. "Topics include "apartments for rent," "lost and found," "pet adoption" and "garage sales." It also includes personals sites such as "missing you," "just friends" and "activity partners.""
EBay also operates the international classifieds site - Kijiji - where sellers from over 24 countries post.
Interestingly, eBay also owns 25% of Craigslist, a key competitor to the new services.
Canada, It’s Time To Clue Into Search! by Gord Hotchkiss, SearchInsider (June 14)
Many statistics on Canadian use of the Internet but they don't get the commercial side - Hotchkiss says the "quality of sponsored ads is abysmal".
eBay Confirms StumbleUpon Acquisition For $75 Million the.next.net (May 31)
eBay, where people bid and buy, bought Stumbleupon where people discover and share content. (Press release).
Why? Is it to get into search, as Erick Schonfeld, suggests, or to sell ads as posited by a person who commented on the post -- "There's an interesting analyst's article on Metue that speculates this was largely a big up-front ad buy with marketing benefits underscoring the purchase. It wasn't about search, they say, it was about marketing (and paid search) The article is worth checking out: http://metue.com/05-31-2007/ebay-stumble-upon-valuation/"
This I did not know - "Publishers, like Metue for example, can buy placements from Stumble Upon that insure a certain number of page views from Stumble Upon users per day; just another form of website marketing. "
Goodbye Froogle, Hello Google Product Search!, Danny Sulllivan, Searchengineland (Apr 18)
What took Google so long? Froogle - cute name, easy to remember, but didn't draw the crowds for product search - now its Google Product Search - much more sedate and believable.
"Despite the name change, Google Product Search won't regain home page positioning. It remains buried as part of the "More" options after the Images, Video, News & Maps links. However, Mayer said that Google is currently experimenting with new navigation across Google properties, so it could be that Google Product Search might find a better home this way"
Analyzing The Major Shopping Search Services, by Gord Hotchkiss (Apr 13)
Begins with Yahoo Shopping, MSN Shopping, and Google's Froogle. He doesn't explicitly rank them but his comments suggest that as a user, he finds Yahoo is a better shopping experience that at the other two. All fail somewhat in giving "real estate" over to sponsored ads at the expensive of usefulness to the searcher.
Wize Up For Better Product Reviews by Chris Sherman, Search engine land (Mar 13)
Favourable review of Wize for consumers to use for researching products. "Wize has aggregated more than 1.2 million reviews, from both experts and users, drawn from more than 6,300 web sites that feature reviews."
You can also use the comparison shopping search engines to get reviews - Become.com or Yahoo shopping - or the the consumer review sites - Epinions, ConsumerSearch and ConsumerReview.com.
Retrevo Provides Product Information, Discussion, Reviews…, ResearchBuzz (Feb 10)
"Retrevo, in gamma at http://www.retrevo.com/, provides product information. And not just shopping information, but also manufacturer information, reviews and articles, and forum and blog posts. Consumer metasearch? It’s so nice to find a search engine that actually focuses on product information without being overwhelmingly oriented towards buying."
But it is consumers electronic search. I tried it on Toshiba tablet laptop M500 and it was very good showing blogs, manufacturer, and reviews.
What's Wrong with Amazon's Search Engine?, TVC Alert (Jan 30)
Builds on comments in the PC World blog article -- No, I Will Not Renew My Amazon Prime Membership! -- on problems with Amazon search - very poor filtering /categorization and many duplicates. Tyburski adds to this list with her tests on finding an audio book - Amazon has it but won't show it in search results.
Sounds like Amazon's search facility needs an overhaul and a full faceted metadata search.
PC World blog entry is also of interest to anyone being wooed by the Amazon invitations to join Prime - it's too hard to find the products that qualify for the lower shipping costs.
Amazon Quietly Launches Amapedia, a Wikipedia For Products, Read/Write Web (Jan 25)
Amapedia "s a community for sharing information about the products you like the most." . Also there is some connection with the ProductWiki.
This looks like a wiki for products rather than an encyclopedia to me, but wikipedia probably carries more weight as a term.
This review says, "Another way to look at this: Amapedia could become the next generation of user reviews. User reviews on websites today are relatively rigid and old fashioned, so Amazon may be thinking that Amapedia will be a new platform for user reviews - it may help remove redundancy in reviews, while offering more completeness."
Is this supposed to compete with the product review sites like Become.com, or Epinions.com?
Visual search and shopping collide -- Commentary: Like.com enhances buying experience , by Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Nov 9)
Artificial intelligence comes to shopping. Like.com is a comparison shopping engine with a difference - it can find things that look like something else.
" For now, Like.com helps you find jewelry, watches, handbags, and shoes. The engine crawls the Web for images, and will soon crawl eBay's merchandise as well. Additionally, Riya has some merchant partner deals. All told, Riya compares 2 million products offered by 200 merchants, including Amazon.com.
The service works this way. The homepage has photos of celebrities. You can highlight their shoes or jewelry and tell the Like.com search engine to find a similar item. "
Smarter Launches Visual Search SEW Blog (Oct 31) -- visual search has come to shopping.
Goodbye Froogle; Hello Google Product Results In Web Search, Danny Sullivan, SEW Blog (Sep 25)
Froogle was demoted from the main page, and Google will return results from Google Base on product searches [Shows as Product Search Results - see sony dvd player. ] Google Base is mainly a method for merchants to list their wares.
It's not much of a shopping service. Sullivan hopes "we will see a renamed Google Shopping service still survive, with a custom home page and URL. Shopping search is important enough that it deserves a standalone brand."
Some enhancements are promised -- Google Will Boost Product Searches
Holiday season will see enhancements to Google Base so shoppers can refine queries. Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service, PC World (Sep 25)
"When people search for products on Google.com, the system will present them with another search box so that they can refine their query, wrote Bear Stearns & Co. analysts in a note published Friday."
Microsoft and Google give away office space By Elsa Wenzel, CNet Review (August 29, 2006)
"Microsoft and Google are offering free online packages to put your company's touch on its communications and to help build basic Web sites. While Office Live lets you register a domain name for free, Google's tools work within more browsers."
Compares Microsoft Office Live Basics beta to Google Applications you can use to manage a domain.
New Become.com 'Search Zoom' Feature Categorizes Web Search Results MarketWire via Marketwatch (July 19)
"Become.com, the only vertical search engine to combine Web-wide product-focused search with comparison shopping, today announced "Search Zoom," a new feature that lets customers sort and prioritize research results by information type. Users can select the product information that is most relevant to them from several categories: buying guides, product reviews, discussion forums and product details. Become.com provides a one stop resource for product research and comparison shopping by offering more than 3.2 billion web pages of product information combined with 20 million products from nearly 5000 merchants."
Google Checkout by Elsa Wenzel, CNet (June 29)
"Google Checkout is designed to streamline online shopping by letting you shop with a single login name. This payment method lets you snap up goods found through Google searches or online stores without having to type your credit card number and address repeatedly. There are no fees for shopping with Google Checkout, and transactions are encrypted with the same SSL methods used by banks."
Has video clip.
Also see Hands On: Google's New Checkout Service - Google Checkout line moves fast, but selection is limited - by Dennis O'Reilly, PC World (June 29)
Google Launches Checkout, not the Rumored GBuy by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (June 29)
A Real Estate Vertical Search Roundup, Part 1 by Greg Sterling, SearchDay (June 7)
US housing market is hot online -- "If you thought the housing market was competitive, try online real estate sites. After a couple of years of seeming stability and calm, the sector is now booming with new startups offering everything from estimates on the value of your house (and your neighbors) to discounts on broker commissions and ratings and reviews of local sellers' agents."
On-line payments next on Google's to-do list, by Mathew Ingram, Globe and Mail (June 3)
"At the moment, when you click to buy something through Google Video or the Google Store, you have to sign an agreement with Google Payment Corp. -- a company the search engine giant set up last fall. Going to "purchases.google.com" brings you to a login screen for your Google account, and the site then presents you with a list of all the videos and other items you've bought.
In other words, the structure is already there to support a whole range of purchasing. And while it is still early days for Google Base, the service has already been used by car dealers and real estate agents as a classifieds-style service, one that allows companies to upload their own database of items (hence the name Base) relatively easily. This could put the service squarely in the same camp as eBay, and appeal to that company's core market of "power sellers.""
Guide To Microsoft's Many Shopping Search Sites, Brian Smith, SEW Blog (May 19)
Aims to "clear up confusion around Microsoft's multiple shopping sites which include MSN Shopping, Windows Live Shopping Beta, and Windows Live Product Search Beta. The Marketplaces & Shopping team at Microsoft also runs Windows Marketplace and Windows Live Expo but in this post, I'm just covering the general ecommerce initiatives".
Microsoft unveils product search, Ina Fried, ZDNet.uk (May 5)
"Adding to its ever-growing list of Windows Live beta products, Microsoft on Thursday night plans to launch Windows Live Product Search — a search engine aimed specifically at finding items. The company is beginning with an index of 100,000 merchants."
Also, Windows Live is expected to replace MSN Search as the company's flagship search engine this summer.
GenieKnows.Com Expands Operations by Adding Key Staff; Canadian Search Company Hires Tiffany Mitchell as Director of Business Development, US Office and Gina Kosta as Consultant, Marketwatch (Mar 22) -- The Canadian The Genie Knows is still in business but as a product and service search engine rather than meta-searcher.
Microsoft takes on Craigslist by Allison Linn, AP via Globe and Mail (Dec 1) - Microsoft want to compete with the very successful online classifieds site - Craigslist.
"Microsoft is hoping to distinguish its service, code-named Fremont, from rivals by tying in functionality with other Microsoft products. For example, people will be able to have Microsoft's instant messaging service alert them if items they seek come up for sale, or if someone is interested in buying something they are selling."
Ugh. If this had been left up to Microsoft in the beginning, the classifieds site would require proprietary software, have a fee, and have no Canadian content - imho.
Shopping Search Week 2005 by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Nov 29) - "Annual roundup of new developments in the shopping and comparison search arena." Includes market share data. Shopping.com leads in the U.S. with 18.38%. BizRate has 17.35% and Yahoo SHopping doesn't do badly with $14.38%.
What's New in Shopping Search 2005 (Nov 30) Updates on:
+ AOL InStore Shopping - "shopping buddy" for your AOL Messenger on handheld.
+ Froogle
+ MSN Shopping - has feeds from eBay, PriceGrabber and Shopping.com
+ NexTag
+ PriceGrabber
+ Shopping.com - bought by eBay
+ Shopzilla
+ Yahoo Shopping - 100 million product offerings.
New Players in Shopping and Comparison Search (Dec 1) - people are researching online and buying offline. One of the new services that helps is Become.com which has price and comparison capabilities and web searching for shopping-related information.
Others mentioned in the article: Brilliant Shopper, BuySafeShopping - protection against fraud at eBay, Smarter.com, and ViewScore .
Google’s Vertical Search Strategy - Hitchhiker's Guide to 650 has some interesting comments about how Froogle has been built using other vertical search players. To this, Google will add GoogleBase. It's very likely that the small players will join the pen. Shopping online could be significantly different in a year.
Google Unveils Tool to Map Shopping Trips by Michael Liedtke, AP via Yahoo News (Nov 22)
Do this before you go to the mall to do your holiday shopping. [Only in the USA.]
"The feature, to be unveiled Tuesday at Google's Froogle shopping site, will pinpoint the merchants selling a specific item within a designated ZIP code. Besides displaying a map showing all the local stores carrying the merchandise, Froogle also will list price differences."
Froogle will be getting this information - eventually, it hopes - from Google Base where merchants are invited to upload their lists of inventory (and presumably keep them uptodate). For now a "contractor" is collecting the information
Intriguing idea but I wouldn't trust it to be right.
Danny Sullivan has further detail in Froogle Offers Local Shopping Feature, SEW Blog, in which he describes how this is different from Local Search (local shows stores, Froogle shows goods). He also mentions other shopping tools in the US that let you search by location for products. Apparently, you can also order a book from Amazon online and arrange to pick it up at a bricks-and-mortar store.
All this just in time for the holidays.
The Googlization of Business: Travel by Joshua Stylman & Peter Hershberg, iMedia Connection (Nov 14)
Here's a figure -- "U.S. online market is expected to grow to $91 billion in 2009, or 33 percent of travel purchased, according to Jupiter Research."
Google has helped buyers and sellers - as have other search engines (which isn't stressed in the article).
"But Google's impact is not limited to the individual user. America's number-one search engine has also fundamentally changed the way companies do business. Its ability to bring together sellers and interested buyers at a pivotal point in the purchase process has made it mission-critical to a number of industries."
Yahoo Personalizes Shopping, Adds Community Features by Chris Sherman, Searchday (Nov 15)
"Yahoo Shopping's shoposphere is a new form of social commerce where the Yahoo user community can get involved in commerce without having to worry about any infrastructure."
Also - Yahoo! Embraces Word-of-Mouth in Shopping Redesign by Pamela Parker, CLickZ (Nov 15) - It's all about a "pick list" that users create and share.
"The new community features are consistent with other initiatives that Yahoo! has undertaken recently, including allowing users to share travel advice in Yahoo! Travel and reviews of local merchants in Yahoo! Local."
""Our goal is to make online shopping socially interactive by allowing shoppers to create, build upon and share their areas of interest and expertise," said Rob Solomon, vice president of Yahoo! Shopping Group, in a statement."
New and Improved MSN Shopping Launches Right on Time to Give Shoppers Relief This Holiday Season PR Newswire via Marketwatch (Nov 11)
MSN Shopping has added some tools for comparison shopping and many more retailers in part by collaborating with PriceGrabber.com and Shopping.com.
Mainly, MSN Shopping has categorized products by product type, theme, store, price. Select and compare items.
Sympatico/MSN Shopping Canada does not have the comparison features but it will show products by type, stores, and sometimes price range.
Consumer Reports: Shopping Online Smarter by May Wong, AP via Yahoo News (Nov 3)
Online shopping has been found to be better for price and selection than brick-and-mortar for "purchases of televisions, digital cameras, DVD/DVR players, camcorders, handheld computers, or audio equipment."
"The survey, to be published in the magazine's December issue [Consumer Reports], found that while online outlets may have wider selections and lower prices, physical stores — namely local independent stores and smaller chain retailers, such as Tweeter Home Entertainment and Ritz Camera — offer good service."
Best online stores: Crutchfield.com, Amazon.com, Costco.com, J&R.com, and Buy.com.
Article has tips on shopping for consumer electronic online or off.
Amazon.com plans programs allowing online access of books Marketwatch [subscription] (Nov 3) Amazon is "developing two new programs that will allow customers to purchase online access to any page, section, or chapter of a book, as well as the entire book."
Amazon to offer excerpts of books By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch
Amazon.com to Sell Individual Book Pages, by Hillel Italie, AP via Yahoo News (Nov 3)
Authors' Guild approves of the Amazon plan, saying that, "The Amazon programs are the way copyright is supposed to work." Random House, as one publisher, is keen too - "saying it will "work with online booksellers, search engines, entertainment portals and other appropriate vendors to offer the contents of its books to consumers for online viewing on a pay-per-page-view basis.""
"The new Amazon programs are an extension of the company's "Search Inside the Book," which lets users browse a book's contents for free. Over the summer, the company also launched Amazon Shorts, which offers brief, original fiction and nonfiction for 49 cents each."
Warming up to eBay - Commentary: Will Skype help drive the eBay monopoly? Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch [registration] (Oct 18) - Comments generally on the search scene and observes - "no one knows where the search wars will be fought next." Meanwhile, eBay monopolizes the online marketplace even more so with its acquisition of PayPal and now Skype Technologies (for VoIP).
EBay Calls On Skype For Growth by Gavin O'Malley, Media Post (Sept 13)
"WEB AUCTIONEER EBAY ON MONDAY said it would buy the Web telephony start-up Skype for between $2.6 billion and $4.1 billion, with the exact price depending on whether Skype meets performance targets over several years. "
"Meg Whitman, eBay's CEO, said on a conference call Monday that eBay, Paypal, and Skype should amount to an "unparalleled e-commerce and communications engine.""
On-line swapmeet makes waves on the Net by Amy Carmichael, Canadian Press via Globe and Mail (Aug 21)
"The on-line swapmeet phenomenon craigslist.org is exploding into the hottest space to rant, job shop, house hunt and meet people."
Popularity of the Craigslist as a place to put up classified ads is spreading in Canada. People love it because postings are free, there are no cookies, email addresses are not sold to others, and spammers are controlled. Sites are self-policed to remove offensive ads.
"Postings on the Vancouver page are up 500 per cent over last year from 4,500 to 28,000, making it the busiest craigslist site outside of the U.S."
Montrealers are using it too and there will soon be a French-language version.
Google's Lead Over Yahoo! Narrows in Latest American Customer Satisfaction Index; Analysis by ACSI E-Business Sponsor ForeSee Results Says Google and Yahoo! Engaged in Dogfight at the Top, But Don't Count Out AOL, Ask Jeeves Business Wire via Marketwatch (Aug 17)
Latest report from University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) report on e-business websites shows high customer satisfaction with Google and Yahoo.
+ Google again received a higher score (82) in the e-business sector and gets the lion's share of searches.
+ Yahoo moved up from 78 to 80 and is nipping at Google's heels.
+ AOL is slowly climbing - now at 71
+ MSN is lagging - 75
+ Ask Jeeves, like AOL, has been doing better - now at 72 and improving its e-business position.
Consumers Want Personalization -- and Privacy By Sean Michael Kerner, ClickZ (Aug 16) - People want more personalization but don't want to state their preferences. Choicestream, in its second annual study into this, surveyed 923 adults in the United States.
+ 80% interested in personalized content.
+ Young people are interested in recommendations for music (47%), and older (including over 50) are somewhat interested in news, books, and Web search (26%)
+ 59% were willing to provide personal preferences, down from 65% in 2004.
+ 46% were willing to provide demographic information, down from 57% in 2004.
Q and A With New Shopping Search Engine Become.com, Part 1 by Shari Thurow, Clickz (Aug 1)
Thurow is a shopper and likes Become.com. "It makes online shopping easier by separating researchers from buyers. Senior Director for Product Search Jon Glick, formerly senior manager of Web search at Yahoo!, talks about Become.com in a two-part interview."
Jon Glick explains how Become.com is different -- "JG: Unlike other comparison-shopping sites, Become.com provides users with a fully integrated research and shopping experience. We help people conduct Web research to help determine the right products for their needs. We then let them easily move between looking at Web resources like buying guides and expert reviews, and traditional comparison shopping."
Become.com, which began as a search engine to help in researching products, now does comparison pricing as well. "This new service helps consumers find the best deals on over 5-million products and services from a wide range of online merchants. The comparison shopping service is tightly integrated with Become.com's research index of over 3-billion pages to give consumers unparalleled access to the best shopping information."
Become.com Launches Integrated Web Search and Comparison Shopping; Adds Comparison Shopping to Its Product Research Service to Empower Web Consumers, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Jul 19)
Chris Sherman reviewed it in Become.com Offers Comparison Shopping, SearchDay (Jul 19)
"The key difference between Become.com and most other shopping search services is the ability to research products using Become.com's web search index, gather useful information and then seamlessly switch to a comparison shopping tool. Most other shopping search services focus primarily on the comparison aspect of shopping, offering a limited set of reviews or other product information."
Canadian shopping search engine readied for launch by Jack Kapica, Globe and Mail (Jun 28)
ShopToIt.ca a Calgary-based company, "aims to streamline the Canadian experience" with a product search engine that limits search results to Canadian merchants. Seventy retailers have joined including Indigo, Future Shop and Sears offering a selection of 400,000 products.
"The company is hoping for revenues of $15-million by its third year of operation, a forecast based on attracting 36 per cent of the Canadian shopping search engine traffic and 0.3 per cent of all Canadian search traffic."
It will launch on July 1. Beta version looks very functional with many product categories and parametric search within a category for products like digital cameras (price, model, megapixels, brand). Can put items on a comparison clipboard and then create a more detailed comparison. However, ShopToIt will have to get more specifications on the products to make this useful. And need more stores to make the price comparison shopping. Nonetheless, it is wonderful that there will soon be a substantial Canadian shopping search engine.
Google Payment System Deals with Micropayments, says Lee Traffick (June 25) - maybe Google's payment system will get into micropayments where you pay pennies for content.
Answers.com Launches E-Commerce Elements Press Release (June 24) - Answers.com, the search engine that specializes in online reference, has added Shopping.com's catalog of products to its answer machine.
"Whether site visitors are seeking information on clothing, electronics, jewelry, tools, books, or items in many other consumer product categories, the new arrangement enables them to identify, research, compare, and purchase products as part of their quest for answers. To see this in action, visit www.answers.com and type in iPod, chocolate, or bracelet. "
Sometimes the results from Shopping.com show at the top of the page as with ipod, or in the side panel - barbeque
Is Google becoming the Microsoft of the Internet? by Mathew Ingram, Globe and Mail (June 22) The likeness of Google to Microsoft in Ingram's words is "because it [Google or Microsoft] can move entire markets simply by expressing an interest in entering a particular field".
In this case the field is online payment where PayPal has 72 million users and $ 18 billion in payments. PayPal makes up 20% of eBay's revenue, and eBay was hoping to push that up to 50%.
"Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy noted in a research report that while PayPal is the market leader, Google was also a distant second when it entered the keyword-search advertising market -- next to Overture, which was later acquired by Yahoo -- and it is now No. 1 in that industry. And while Google's service may not go head-to-head with PayPal, Mark Mahaney of Citigroup Smith Barney said "the incremental risk" caused by Google Wallet is "that it might limit PayPal's growth as an on-line payment solution" outside of eBay. And that in turn would add fuel to concerns about the company's future growth rate."
ShopLocal.com was also honored at the 2005 EPpy Awards as the best Internet Shopping Service. What - better than Yahoo and eBay and Shopping.com and Froogle? This I have to see. Enter a zip code (this is U.S. only) to get deals and specials in the neighbourhood. Has grocery stores, Radio Shack sales, Target, drug stores, clothing stores. Please let this replace the mountainous stacks of flyers that are delivered to American homes daily in the newspaper and in the mail.
From the company blurb: "The ShopLocal Network, consisting of ShopLocal.com and more than 200 leading media, search and shopping Web sites, provides retailers with access to a dynamic, geographically-based marketplace of ready-to-buy shoppers looking to purchase items from t-shirts to televisions, and food to furniture at a store near them. Retailers benefit from ShopLocal's DataPoint services, the most complete Web-to-store tracking information available, providing retailers with the understanding necessary to make each Web-to-store effort more successful."
ShopLocal.com Named Best Internet Shopping Service
Leading Web-to-Store Site Honored at 2005 EPpy Awards, Presented by Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek Magazines - PRNewswire via Yahoo News (June 15)
Top 10 UK shopping comparison sites at Net Imperative. (June 3) - Kelkoo.co.uk is the big one in the UK with 43.8% of visits. Top search terms are UK brands. And how many comparison shopping engines does Canada have? None - though there is a rumour that a Froogle Canada is in the works.
Pulling out the Google thorn by Bambi Francisco, CBS MarketWatch (June 2) - Comments on EBay's acquisition of Shopping.com, both of whom have been very dependent on Google for directed traffic and , in the case of Shopping.com, revenue from Google ads. With Shopping.com, EBay will get more buyers, and Shoppping.com can advertise eBay's listings rather than buying from Google.
New comparison shopping engine for the US - Brilliant Shopper - - site is "optimized" for Internet Explorer. Has gift ideas, related products, product reviews (tho hard to find and not necessarily in depth), directory to services that includes Travel. Some results are from merchants and come with prices. Other results come from the Web and may have some information value. Can also click into individual store sites such as Sears or Target. Combination is interesting, but not clear yet if it's effective.
Reviewed by Chris Sherman - A New Shopping Search Player (Apr 25) - says its an aggregator of shopping information. He's "willing to give the company a break, and watch the service as it evolves".
Yahoo allows shopping site to be itself By Chris Oakes, International Herald Tribune (May 25) -- Kelkoo has been maintaining a steady course as the big comparison shopping engine for Europe even though it was acquired by Yahoo a year ago. In the next phase, Kelkoo will be adding some Yahoo features like personalizing home pages.
Google and Shopping.com are also expanding into the UK, and Google into France and Germany.
Information wants to be free -- but it isn't , by Bill Virgin, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (May 17)
Predicts the demise of free information on the Internet because advertisers will realize that people are ignoring their ads on the Web.
"The advertising model upon which so many Internet and media businesses are based today constitutes a house of cards, awaiting merely a puff of breath or the flick of a finger to cause it to collapse. In 10 years -- maybe less -- the notion of free content underwritten by advertising revenue will have been swept away by something else."
Cites as an example free television vs premium channels and the dependence on subscriptions to cable to see anything. Also radio; also cellphone.
Andrew Goodman has news about two new comparison shopping engines for Canadians.
ShopToIt.ca - Calgary based, bilingual listings, similar to Shopping.com and PriceGrabber in the US. Full launch will be July 1.
A Froogle Canada (URL to be determined) in about a month. "Google's sales force in Canada already works with larger retailers, and will have relatively little trouble adding them to the Froogle platform. It may take some time, however, for many smaller retailers to cotton onto the value of using shopping search engines to drive traffic."
Tales from SES North, Vol. 1: Shop to It Stands on Guard for the True North Strong and Free at Traffick.com (May 6)
Chris Sherman has some shopping-recommendation sites for people needing ideas for mother's day gifts. In Searching for a Mother's Day Gift (May 2) he describes Yahoo's Gift Finder.. Answer questions about age, relationship, lifestyle to get a list of categories and products.
Become.com Launches Shopping Search Engine by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Apr 11) - Become.com is a new shopping search engine that crawls 40 million web sites in the US.
"The result is a shopping search engine that provides lots of reviews, product details and other helpful information while you're in the research stage, as well as comparison shopping tools and direct links to merchants when you're ready to buy"
However, it is very unstructured and feels like a list of Google results.
The End User: Let Net find lowest price by Victoria Shannon, International Herald Tribune (Mar 19) -- Europe will have more options for comparison shopping. Dan Ciporin of Shopping.com opened one in the UK in 2000 and is adding France and Germany this year. Competition is the Yahoo-owned Kelkoo, which based in Paris and operates throughout Europe.
Specialty searchers, a future trend? - Commentary: Finding alternative to the big players - John Dvorak, Marketwatch (via CBS Marketwatch) - Describes Become.com as a specialty engine - it is for shopping - "Using both page-ranking concepts and proprietary methodologies the site attempts to isolate product news, reviews and sales elements."
Here's the innovation -- "What makes the choice of "shopping" a note of genius is that the site can serve up targeted advertisements for people who are probably online to buy something. Thus the effectiveness of advertising with Become.com should be higher than with Google or the competition."
Become.com is in test. Must register to try it.
EBay opens classified-ad sites> -- By Michael Bazeley, Mercury News (Mar 9) -- EBay has launched an international network of 47 websites for classified-ads in China, Germany, Japan, Canada, France and Italy - but not the United States where Craigslist is well established. (EBay has a stake in craigslist). Kijiji will be in the language of the country, wherease Craigslist is in English.
"EBay launched the 47 Web sites in 50 cities under the brand name Kijiji (www.kijiji.com) Feb. 28. They offer the usual assortment of ads, from personals to jobs and housing. EBay is allowing users to post ads free of charge for now, while it tries to build up market share in each of the cities."
Canada sites are Montreal and Quebec and are in French.
Shoppers in the U.S. have another comparison shopping engine they can use - SortPrice. Seems to be based in New York. Issued a press release saying, Sortprice.com - the Broad-Based Shopping Search Engine to Watch (Feb 23). It provides free listings for merchants, and reasonably good categorization of products. However, it doesn't have reviews or the parameter searching that others like Yahoo Shopping have.
The future of comparison shopping in the Internet Stock Blog (Feb 22) Picks up comments made by Sean O'Rourke, author of the Organized Shopping Blog, on the future of comparison shopping. "This is a must-read for anyone interested in Shopping.com, Google's Froogle, Yahoo Shopping, MSN Shopping, and ValueClick's entry into comparison shopping."
Organized Shopping Blog also has an extended review of the MSN Shopping Beta.
Another comparison shopping engine? The founders of MySimon are about to launch a new engine. MySimon founders launch new engine -- Veteran dot-commers jump on search craze by Bambi Francisco, CBS Marketwatch (Feb 23) This time it's Become.com It will find online retailers and also related articles on a product. Watch for the launch.
Number of Canadians who are taking up online shopping is picking up. Canadians increased online gift purchases during the holiday season by 59% - up to 3.5 million buyers. In the US the growth was 29%.
Figures are from an Ipsos Reid study reported on by the Globe and Mail --
Canadians out-spend Americans on-line (Jan 27)
"The incidence of adults with Internet access having ever made an online purchase hit a new tracking high of 56 per cent, which is up from 47 per cent this time last year and 39 per cent in 2002. This figure is equivalent to 44 per cent of all Canadian adults having made at least one purchase directly on-line."
People are still buying books (29%), but also clothes (28%), DVDs and movies (25%).
Shopping Search Week 2004! by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Nov 29) - Part 1 of a series with updates about shopping search engines. Points to a trend to searching websites of local retailers and then buying locally.
Online shoppers warned to be vigilant EXPERTS CAUTION AGAINST SPYWARE, PHISHING By Dan Lee, Mercury News (Nov 29) Has several tips.
The Sites Before Christmas Foot-Weary Shoppers Can Fill Their Lists From a Growing Online Mall By Leslie Walker, The Washington Post (Nov 25) [Registration reqd] -- discovered how much easier it is today to order "unusual, foreign, cheap or luxury products online". Has several shopping success stories. I'll add mine too - found a box of the very rare and delicious Thornton's toffees through Froogle and a company named MadeinBritain LTD- ships in the US and Canada.
Sites tell where to shop on the Web By Michael Bazeley Mercury News (Nov 22) -- reviews Shopping.com, Yahoo Shopping, Froogle, NexTag, Shopzilla.
Superpages Adds Shopping and Web Search By Zachary Rodgers, ClickZ (November 17) Superpages.com has partnered with eBay, Shopping.com, and Fast Search & Transfer to create a new shopping portal. "Through deals with those vendors, the local search provider is preparing to roll out a tab-based search system on its site. New capabilities include shopping comparison, bidding and Internet search."
This is for the US market. This all-in-one center has the Yellow Pages for a place - local search; comparison shopping online for merchandise; offerings up for bid at eBay; and a web search done by Fast (previously the search engine for Alltheweb). The web search will group results by keyword. This will be excellent for product research and comparison even for people outside the United States.
New Options at Yahoo Shopping Search Engine Watch Blog (Nov 5 ) - Describes new parameter search for products at Yahoo and points out that Snap.com and AOL have similar features for their comparison shopping products.
See Yahoo Launches Precision Browsing InternetNews (Nov 5) -- Describes improvements at Yahoo Shopping for presenting attributes of products for people to use to narrow their search. This has been available for some time for electronic consumer goods, but Yahoo has added attributes for general merchandise.
"Yahoo is looking for its best-ever holiday shopping season, having seen 40 percent growth year over year, growth Solomon attributes to comparison-shopping and search tools that make it easy for shoppers to find products at good prices."
A Busy Month for Froogle by Gary Price. Search Engine Watch Blog (Oct 29) - roundup of news about Froogle, Google's product search engine. Mainly - it will compare prices across merchants for a product. Has more filters for slicing and dicing products than I remember.
What's Selling, Where -- Amazon's Micro-Bestseller Lists by Andrew Goodman, Traffick.com (Oct 17) Amazon will tell you what is selling where. Goodman finds shopping at Amazon a good deal more rewarding than going into a Chapters store in Canada.
Microsoft enters comparison shopping market By Wolfgang Gruener, Senior Editor, Tom's Hardware Guide (October 11, 2004)
Is this a scoop or what? Tom's Hardware Guide beat others to announcing Microsoft's new comparison shopper for Windows users -- WindowsmarketPlace.com - opening in your browser today (Tuesday). It says that "the (preview) site currently lists about 46,000 hardware and 87,500 software products". One thing - you'll know whether the products are compatible with Windows XP.
Shopping Search Tactics By Shari Thurow. SearchDay (Sep 29) -- The tactics referred to in the title are for the merchants, not the searchers. Only 18% of so use the shopping search tools - comparison shopping engines. Of interest - there are seen to be 3 types of shopping search engines: commission based (Amazon), referral fees (probably BizRate and Shopping.com etc), and no-charge (Froogle).
New AOL Comparison Shopping Site Debuts Search Engine Watch Blog (Sept 20) AOL has introduced inStore for comparison shopping. Database comes from Bizrate but AOL created the search technology. Has a useful product taxonomy.
Borrowers And Lenders Meet at Moogul by Leslie Walker at Washington Post (July 15) Moogul is a new online marketplace for lending and borrowing things. So far it has about 2,000 items, according to Walker. Items are mainly books, videos, and cds but I found two entries for a chain saw. Will this be the next eBay?
NexTag Goes Global With Launch of Comparison Shopping Site for the United Kingdom PR Newswire via CBS Newswatch (June 2) -- "NexTag UK (http://uk.nextag.com/) provides British online shoppers with the best prices for products in categories like consumer electronics, computer products, home appliances, and mobile phones. The site currently features products from more than 50 British retailers, including Dabs.com, Ebuyer, Savastore, 24-7 Electrical, Electric Shop, PC Nextday, and Planet Micro. NexTag UK will continue to roll-out additional retailers and product categories over the next several months. " Would be nice if NexTag would do the same for Canadian online shoppers.
Questions for Froogle's Mastermind, Part 1 by Shari Thurow. Clickz (May 24) - Thurow likes Froogle, Google's shopping search engine. She says, "As a Web designer who practices usability principles, I'm thoroughly impressed with the user-friendly shopping experience I get at Froogle. " She interviewed Craig Nevill-Manning, Google's director of New York engineering and senior staff research scientist.
Internet trends for 2004 by Mary Meeker and others for Morgan Stanley (April 2004). Identifies twelve trends that are driving change on the Internet. Essentially they believe that "the Internet is still in the early stages of becoming a central communications, information, commerce, and entertainment medium". Growth, growth and more growth - in users, usage (broadband), search, e-commerce.
Chat Gets Pushy by Lisa DiCarlo Forbes (March 17) The next online store you go to might jump up in a chat box and ask if it can help you.
Ebay to experiment again with local auction sites by Ben Berkowitz. Reuters (Feb 24) via CBS Marketwatch. - May open up auction sites for individual cities.
Of interest - "Ebay, which has 41,000 auction categories worldwide and gets up to 6,000 item listings per second at peak times, will focus its investments in 2004 on its PayPal payments business, operations in China, and infrastructure, she [Chief Executive Meg Whitman ] said." EBay does not see Google, Yahoo or MSN as competitors in spite of their interest in shopping. Whitman said they were "enablers of our business."
Local Search Growing, but Small Biz Advertisers Cautious by Greg Sterling. SearchDay (Feb 24) - Online shoppers in the US were surveyed about their search tools.
"64% said "search engines are better" than printed yellow pages for finding commercial information. And 52% said search engines are better than other "offline" sources such as newspapers, magazines and direct mail. " But search engines weren't better than the online "Internet Yellow Pages, vertical directories or telephone directory assistance". Author doesn't think that small business owners will flock to pay-per-click advertising at the search engines.
This Feb 11 PR Newswire press release through CBS Marketwatch says "Local Search Now 25% of Internet Commercial Activity" [requires free registration]. The Kelsey Group and BizRate.com conducted a survey of 5,500 online buyers (mainly U.S.) and found that 25.1% were looking for merchants near home or workplace.
Of interest -- "Chuck Davis, President and CEO of BizRate.com said, "Consumers are increasingly using search for shopping related queries. In fact, over a third (36%) of all search activity is now shopping-based, defined as using search functionality to look for a merchant, research a purchase or make an online purchase. We expect to see shopping searches continue to increase." "
Google Enhances Froogle, Offers New Ad and Search Features by Chris Sherman SearchDay (Dec 15) - various small enhancements.
Chris Sherman at SearchEngineWatch is running a series about shopping search engines during the week of December 8. Shopping Search Week.
He notes that "shopping search now also provides a lot of valuable information that's simply beyond the capabilities of general search tools. Things like consumer reviews, merchant ratings, lists of the most popular products, total prices that include tax and shipping -- all of these features are designed not only to help you find the best deal, but to help you research and compare products well before you're ready to buy."
Also see my newsletter about Comparison Shoppping on the Web.
Shopping Search Engines Listing Information Web Advantage (Dec 4) - Has information on rates and paid listing arrangements at the main comparison shopping search engines.
Online sales take off over Thanksgiving AP (Dec 3)
In the United States they started to shop right after the turkey dinner. "That shows how consumers are increasingly using the Internet as an information tool -- scouring for deals and then purchasing as much as they can online before heading to the malls for those early bird specials and other deals on Friday. The change in shopping patterns also reflect how millions of homes have converted to high-speed Internet connections, making it easier to shop from home, analysts said."
Online Paid Content: Trends & Opportunities eMarketer (Dec 2003) Excerpts from a for-fee study concerning the online paid content market. High growth has been seen in purchases of music (148%), personal diet and dating (122% / 48%), but a drop in research (-13%). Doesn't give percentages of revenue. Costs $695 to learn more. Mentioned at TVC ALert.
Holiday e-Tail Performance Index
Gomez is monitoring the performance of the top 37 shopping sites in the United States over the holidays. It looks at speed of the homepage and transaction speed at online apparel stores and mass merchants (books, music, electronics).
On December 1, BizRate was the fastest at .3 seconds for response, and Yahoo Shopping one of the slowest at 5.1. In analyzing transactions, Gomez has found that "site performance is highly dependent on connection speed. " Of course broadband is significantly faster than dial-up but high-speed doesn't have a huge advantage over low-speed.
Search engines rev up for holidays Associated Press Via Globe and Mail (Nov 27) - about using product comparison sites for shopping - works well for shoppers in the United States and not so well for people outside. See the WSG Newsletter on Comparison Shopping on the Web.
Special report from Business Week on Online Shopping (Nov 24)
> E-Shoppers Are Now E-Spenders: Retailers are learning to give Web customers what they want, such as better integration of sites and stores and flexible return policies
> Why Amazon Still Packs a Punch: Skeptics on the Street have counted out the giant of online retailing many times, but the outfit always seems to come back swinging
> These Sites Are a Shopper's Dream: Comparison sites such as Shopping.com and BizRate are growing fast -- and making money bringing buyers and merchants together
> B2B, Take 2: After the dot-com bust, the few surviving exchanges have emerged with strong corporate ties, sharpened relevance, and powerful converts
> An Iffy Prognosis for Online Pharmacies: Greying baby boomers guarantee that the industry will take off. Trouble is, legal issues and questionable sites make it tough to pick winners
> A "Behind-the-Scenes" E-Commerce Power: GSI Commerce's Michael Rubin explains how his outfit does all the heavy lifting for clients' retail sites.
U.S. complaints about e-commerce rising REuters via USA Today (Nov 24)
"The survey by the Consumer Federation of America found an increase in the number of local consumer agencies that cited e-commerce or the Internet as a major complaint category in 2002, pushing it into one of the top 10 complaints."
Also -- ""The Internet is the best avenue for any crook you could ever want," Hannan said."
Local Search Part 4: Major Search Engines On Yellow Pages By Dick Larkin,
(November 13, 2003 ) SearchDay
"Yellow Pages publishers are concerned that web search is going to make inroads into the $25 billion Yellow Pages market. The improvements in local search threaten publishers' IYP offerings and they foretell a credible threat to the printed directory business."
"The panel agreed that the local search market is enormous and getting larger. Somewhere between 20-35% of all web search is seeking geographically relevant results, and every panelist said they expect that percentage of local queries to increase with user sophistication, better search technology and deeper local content. "
Ask Jeeves beefs up product search by Juan Carlos Perez. IDG News (Nov 11)
"The new Smart Search for Products technology intuitively detects when a user is searching for product information and delivers shopping information, such as Web pages containing reviews, lists of features, stores and price comparisons, according to the company. The user can refine the search results by using a drop-down menu to select links leading only to product reviews or to product features, for example. The search engine also provides options for fine-tuning the results through clarification tools, which give suggestions to the user to, for example, narrow the search. "
The State of Online Search - Implications for the Yellow Pages Industry by Russell Fradin (Sept 15, 2003) - PDF file - a very interesting presentation at the 2003 Association of Directory Marketing Annual Conference by ComScore Networks, a company that studies consumer behaviour. Has figures on Internet use. Main point was that "massive online search activity is occurring, much of it Yellow Pages oriented". 88% of searches are done at Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. Leading Yellow Pages services nationally are SuperPages (32%) , Yahoo Yellow (21%), Switchboard (13%) and SBC SmartPages (9%).
Local Search Part 3: Google Gets Local With AdWords By Danny Sullivan. SearchDay (Oct 28) - Google has a new product for advertisers that will target ads to local areas in the U.S. Sullivan doesn't see it being added soon to the Regional Search in Google Labs because of low traffic.
Ask Jeeves Launches Smart Search(SM) for Products Press Release (Nov 3)
"Ask Jeeves automatically delivers the searcher to a Smart Search results page when it identifies that a query is shopping-related. Ask Jeeves then leverages its natural language capabilities to recognize where the user is in the shopping cycle - finding, researching or buying - and adjusts the search according to the users intent. For example, if you type "camera" in the ask.com home page, clarification tools will help you narrow your query by prompting you to sort by types of camera or camera accessories. If you know you want to search for "digital cameras", Smart Search for Products lets you browse brands, features, reviews and information on where to buy digital cameras. Lastly, if you know you want a specific camera, Ask Jeeves Smart Search for Products will guide you directly to information on that particular product. "
BizRate.com Raises Industry Bar with Launch of Next Generation Shopping Search Engine Business Wire (Nov 3) -- "BizRate.com, the web's leading comparison shopping site, today announced the launch of its next generation search engine, setting the new standard for shopping search in time for the 2003 holiday online shopping season. " It has 38,000 stores, 20 million products, and collects 1 million reviews each month. There is also a visual search that will match products based on a digital image.
Yahoo! Introduces Smartsort Technology: Personalized Product Recommendation Tool "New Yahoo! Search Technology Helps Consumers Customize Shopping Experience Based on Personal Product Preferences" Yahoo Press Release (OCt 16)
Consumers will be able to rank criteria on nine product groups to get top 10 recommendations. Products are digital cameras, MP3 players, personal digital assistants, desktop computers, notebook computers, printers, mobile phones, televisions, and DVD players. This is just the beginning.
LookSmart Sponsored Listings To Take On Google & Overture by Danny Sullivan. SearchDay (Oct 2)
Looksmart has modified its sponsored listings program to be open to anyone and to use competitive bidding - similar to Google and Overture's programs. Previously the sponsored listings program was flat-rate based and used mainly by large advertisers (30,000 of them). This change, Sulllivan says, may strengthen Looksmart's position as an all-in-one search provider. It will be able to provide paid placement listings and "editorial style" listings (relevance ranked search results). This may strengthen Looksmart's position with MSN, who uses the Looksmart directory and might turn to Looksmart for paid listings instead of Overture. Infospace already uses Looksmart for sponsored listings.
See also LookSmart Looking to Trump Yahoo! Move by Michael Liedtke,
Associated Press in Silicon Valley.com (Oct 2)
Yahoo! Customizes Ads for 'New Yorker' By Ann M. Mack (September 30, 2003 ) - a sign of things to come, Yahoo will supply contextual ads to the New Yorker to highlight Yahoo's properties.
"Text-only ads running under the theater heading of that section, for instance, will carry copy such as, "Break a Leg? Yahoo! Health," or "Get Your Own Tony ... Yahoo! Personals." Another ad for the Web portal's personals will read, "Harvard Symbologist seeks Mona Lisa"—a fitting reference to The Da Vinci Code that will appear in the magazine's books section."
Google buys personalized search start-up Reuters via CNet (Oct 1) - Google bought "Kaltix, a start-up that builds the personalized and context-sensitive search tools the industry sees as part of its next wave of product offerings".
This is likely to deliver targeted advertising rather than better search results.
Consumers Spend More for Online Content by Ann Mack, ADweekIQ via Editor and Publisher (Sept 25)
"Consumer spending for online content in the U.S. reached $748 million in the first half, up 23% versus the year-ago period, according to a new report.
The study, commissioned by the Online Publishers Association and conducted by comScore Networks, revealed that three categories dominate the online paid content arena. Personals/dating, business/investment, and entertainment/lifestyle represented 65% of the dollars spent for content on the Web in the first half. Personals and dating services continue to drive overall growth ... "
Amazon.com Invades Google's Turf Retailing Giant to Build Search Engine Michael Liedtke, AP via Editor and Publisher (Sept 26)
A9 is an Amazon startup company charged with creating a new search engine for e-commerce that could be licensed to other Web sites. Amazon wants to be a "technology services company" rather than just online retail.
Of interest ...
- Google has 150,000 advertisers and Overture 95,000.
- Search engines are expected to get 2 billion in revenue for paid listings. Some estimate that this will grow to $8 billion / year, "but other observers think the potential is being exaggerated".
Searching And Shopping By Leslie Walker Washington Post (Sep 25) -- Comments on the recent prominence of comparison shopping sites in the news -- Shopping.com and Yahoo's new Shopping centre.
Of interest -- "We are at the nexis of two big trends," said Nirav Tolia, chief operating officer of Shopping.com. "One is the migration toward direct marketing, or performance-based advertising online. The other is continued growth of e-commerce, which is huge."
There is a good list of sample web shopping guides in the sidebar.
Amazon gets into shopping search by Stephanie Olsen. CNet News (Sep 25)
"Amazon.com has formed a group to develop e-commerce search technology, an attempt to gain a foothold in a lucrative market Google and Yahoo now dominate. " Amazon has set up a separate unit called A9.com to develop a shopping search tool. Does this mean Amazon will take on the new Shopping.com, Yahoo's new product search, and Google's Froogle?
Yahoo launches new search engine Reuters via CNN (Sept 23) --Yahoo has added more product search and price comparisons.
"The new products search is directly integrated into Yahoo's main search engine and features a full range of products from across the Internet, from computers to camping gear, with search results sorted by relevance. "
"Like many other Internet product search sites, the new Yahoo platform will offer both merchant reviews and user reviews, as well as side-by-side product comparison grids, and functions that calculate both the base price of products and their final prices after taxes and shipping. "
Chris Sherman at Searchday likes the new search -- Yahoo! Launches New Product Search (Sep 23) - says it "combines the best aspects of the company's existing shopping platform with new advanced search features, including product information gathered from the entire web. "
Just to review - you can search for a product using the main Yahoo search box. Yahoo will direct you to its Shopping section for top brands and comparison shopping. It also has a new tab for Products, also part of the Shopping section.
More Online Comparison Shopping by Bob Tedeschi. New York Times (Sept 22)
Consumers will shop for electronics online but will they look for sweaters and other "soft goods"? Shopping.com is the merger of Dealtime for comparison shopping and Epinions for consumer product reviews. It will have 370,000 apparel items by mid-October.
BizRate, PriceGrabber, and Amazon are three others offering clothes and Yahoo and Froogle have also entered the field of consumer online shopping.
Also -- Dealtime Relaunches as Shopping.com by Chris Sherman. Searchday (Sept 22) - short account of the history of the shopping.com domain.