Kara Swisher reports Google is looking at Groupon as a possible acquisition. She said she has "multiple sources" close to the deal that say Google is very interesting in making a bid on Groupon. Google did not confirm the rumors but did reply to Kara's press request in Google fashion: Per usual, we don’t comment on rumor or speculation. If we did we’d be busy 24/7! Groupon is a local deals coupon site that has grown in popularity. Clone after clone has been created trying to replicate the model. To learn more about Groupon, see our article named A Look At Social Shopping With Grou [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Google: Business Issues | Groupon | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Top News

At first blush it wasn't impressive to me. I assumed from a quick look that FindTheBest was just a collection of links and "best of" lists. It thus seemed strange that DoubleClick founder Kevin O'Connor would come out of quasi-retirement to launch a basic directory site. But as we got into it a bit more it was clear there was a larger and more interesting project going on. FindTheBest is a kind of comparison engine for structured data of all sorts. It's not an alternative to search per se. In fact it will rely heavily on search and SEO for user discovery. The idea is to provide consumer [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Google: Squared | Search Engines: Experimental | Search Engines: Help Engines | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines | Top News

If you're using Foursquare to search for local offers and deals, you may soon find a lot more of them -- especially if you live outside of major cities. Foursquare announced yesterday that it's going to expand the reach of deals/offers in rural areas: The current location range for offers "nearby" is approximately 200 yards, but will, in the future, be variable based on the user's location. In more densely populated areas, 200 yards will provide adequate variability. In areas outside of cities, we're going to increase that range to provide better results for users in less densely popula [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Foursquare | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

According to comScore data, Google Product Search has become the top comparison shopping engine online. Number two is now TheFind, which moved in front of Yahoo Shopping in terms of average daily users: Source: comScore TheFind has been quietly moving up the ladder over the past couple of years and now has surpassed all longer-established competitors except Google. Yahoo recently decided to outsource its merchant listings/content to PriceGrabber, which is number 10. However, PriceGrabber can arguably claim the largest shopping audience online with the combined reach of its own site a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Google: Product Search | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines | Stats: Popularity | Top News

There are a number of "social shopping" sites and, of course, numerous product or shopping-related blogs. Among the most visible in the first category are Kaboodle, ThisNext/Stylehive and Polyvore. They offer tools and features that allow people to share, compare and vote on products. The mainstream shopping comparison engines such as Shopping.com or PriceGrabber don't fully enter into this realm, although Shopping.com is giving away an iPad if you become a "fan" on Facebook: One could argue that the group-buying phenomenon, exemplified by sites like Groupon and LivingSocial (although t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Microsoft: Bing | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines | Search Engines: Social Search Engines

One of the most common questions I hear is "But how can I make money by using social media?" Well, if you are selling goods and can offer up some great specials, there are some direct ways that social media deal sites can help you promote your product to hungry customers. Here are a few examples of social media voting deal sites. The main factor that drives the content for these sites is user generated deals and user voting that decides whether an offer becomes popular or not. Deals Plus This is an extremely well built site by Ben Chui, the man behind Bensbargins.net one of the olde [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

Milo.com has undertaken a most ambitious project -- to be the Google of local product inventory data. The site, which just announced it has come out of beta with 1 million monthly users, is trying to create a massive database of real-time inventory from local (mostly big box) stores. Right now the site offers live inventory information for roughly 1.5 million products. The site likens itself to Kayak in many respects, in terms of the capacity to filter by brand, stores, ratings, and other features. There are several others in this "real-time inventory" segement, and others that have tri [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: Product Search | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

Here are a couple important areas for Industrial Strength search marketers to focus on right now, both of which are feed-based: Google Product Search and Yahoo! Paid Inclusion. Below I outline why these channels matter more than ever this holiday season, and how they can help you capture substantial traffic and sales. Google Product Search is particularly important this year—actually essential for ecommerce sites—as the shopping season gets underway. If you're not yet leveraging it, get a strategy together fast. Meanwhile it's time to grab some loot off a sinking ship—and the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Product Search | Industrial Strength | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

If Bing can brand itself "decision engine" as a strategy to differentiate  from the leading "search engine" so can shopping comparison site TheFind. The latter is now calling itself a "buying engine" as a way to emerge from the anonymous sea of shopping search sites out there. This morning a redesigned TheFind went live with a range of new features, including enhanced product search, coupon aggregation for 50 million products, review search, local inventory and beefed up information about online stores. Beyond a somewhat new look and feel, review search and coupon aggregation are the truly [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

What amazes me is that in more than a decade no "brand" has really emerged in shopping search. What do I mean by "brand"? I mean a site that's top-of-mind for consumers, trusted and that they navigate to directly for products and product information. One could say that the exceptions to this are Amazon, eBay (probably) and CNET in the consumer electronics category. But there are literally dozens and dozens of shopping sites that have been playing the search arbitrage game or trying their best to rank for product-related searches. But they're not really building any "brand equity" or long-term [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

Hitwise is reporting that Bing Shopping moved up to 4th place (from 8th) in the comparision shopping tools category last week, rising to 11% weekly market share. Combining the recent Double Cashback offer from retailers listed on Bing Shopping and the fortunate timing of the annual Back-to-School shopping rush has moved their weekly market share up from just 4% of visits prior to last week. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="506" caption="chart courtesy of Hitwise"][/caption] Overall, Hitwise reports that visits to Bing Shopping have increased 169% since the week ending June 6th ( [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Shopping & Cashback | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines | Search Headlines | Stats: Popularity

It didn't take long for commerce to move online when the WWW was invented in the early '90s, and it hasn't taken long for the same migration to happen as new social networks become important parts of our everyday lives. Don't be surprised if, in the not too distant future, you find yourself using social networking sites to shop, or at least to start the buying process. Twitter as a shopping search engine? You bet. And not only that, but there are also several sites that aim to dig through the clutter and uncover the best deals and coupons that people are talking about and recommending. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines | Twitter

Each day millions of online shoppers turn to comparison shopping engines (CSEs) to compare prices, read reviews, research products and make buying decisions. While comparison shopping engines don’t sell or ship the products featured on their sites, they advertise products from merchants to a diverse online audience. Merchants are using CSEs in a down economy to capture shoppers looking for deals. To take advantage of this growing advertising space and get more exposure than your competitors, you need a product data feed—and even more importantly, you must optimize the feed to gain maximum [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: SEO | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines | SEO: Submitting & Sitemaps

Searchme has rolled out what it calls "true" blended search results, combining web, video, images, music and Twitter results organized by their relevance and playable inside the search results page. Searchme displays results as small versions of entire web pages, in a format that looks just like the "cover flow" display in iTunes. I love Searchme as a "recall engine," using it to find web pages or sites that I've previously visited but can't remember the site name or URL. The visual display of results, with the ability to quickly scroll through mini-versions of pages makes it easy to reco [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Search Engines: Audio Search Engines | Search Engines: Other Search Engines | Search Engines: Photo & Image Search | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines | Search Engines: Video Search Engines | Twitter

Google has upgraded product search for mobile, on Android and iPhone devices, to allow users to get price, product specs and reviews information on their handsets. Google posted about it here. Users can either navigate directly to Google Shopping on their smartphone handsets (under the "more" pull-down) and enter a query or do the same in the main mobile search box and then scroll to the "Shopping Results" on the main SERP. Either way you are sent into a new, optimized mobile shopping experience. Under an "options" pull-down in the upper right of the mobile screen, you can sort by price, ra [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Google: Mobile | Google: Product Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

Microsoft successfully bid to acquire Greenfield Online for approximately $486 million. But Microsoft isn't really interested in Greenfield, it was after the company's subsidiary Ciao GmbH. Founded in 1999 and acquired by Greenfield in 2005, Ciao is an Munich-based EU comparison shopping site with user reviews. According to the press release out this morning: The acquisition signals a further milestone investment for Microsoft in Europe and will see Microsoft increase its European commercial search capabilities as part of its intent to make Microsoft Live Search the premier destination for [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Outside US | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines | Top News

For some time I've tried to argue that product search is part of "local search," because 90 percent or more of all products searched for online are purchased in physical stores. This is a neglected part of the local search story, which has heretofore largely been about "plumbers and pizza." But the internet is fundamentally a research tool that drives offline transactions. E-commerce is, relatively speaking, a niche phenomenon. That's why mobile applications such as TheFind's new iPhone app or Slifter and others are significant: they help bridge the gap between the internet and physical store [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

Microsoft has invested heavily in Live Search and seen its search relevance and results improve but so far not its market share. The company believes its core search results are as good as what you'll find on Google or Yahoo. But its share is flat-to-declining, depending on which of the metrics services you choose to consult (Nielsen most recently found Live Search had dipped below 10 percent). The frustrations surrounding these investments (and improvements) in search without commensurate market share growth is part of what is driving Microsoft's quest for Yahoo or, now, at least its search b [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Marketing | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

There are a handful of companies that have been building local product inventory databases, many of them under the radar. They include Krillion, NearbyNow, Shopatron, Where2GetIt, Channel Intelligence, and ShopLocal. Krillion was the first to start syndicating that data. But NearbyNow is now going to take its billion product database and make it available in the near future through a free API. It's working first to integrate the inventory data with some selected partners (TheFind is the first announced). But eventually anyone will be able to tap into it. In my view this is a radical developm [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

For the readers of Search Engine Land it might come as a surprise that, while most US adults find online shopping "convenient," they still don't like sending personal or credit card information over the internet. Based on a consumer telephone survey, among 2,400 adults (9/07), the Pew Internet Project found a range of contradictory attitudes and ambivalence among Americans about e-commerce and online shopping. The report (.pdf), released yesterday, offered many findings on a range of consumer attitudes and behavior related to online shopping. Here are some highlights:78 percent of online Ame [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines | Stats: Search Behavior