Product Data Feed Management for Shopbots

There are many product feed management services to help online vendors manage their product listing on various shopbots. Most data feed management service allow a vendor to manage their data feed to all major shopbots from Googe Product Search, Amazon.com, Kelkoo, MySimon, NexTag, PriceGrabber.com, Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com, Yahoo Shopping, MSN Shopping, etc.

Here is a list of such feed management services:
ChannelAdvisor.com
SingleFeed.com
productfeedmanager.com

Comparison-shopping for online travelling

Probably because of the SABRE system was one of the first online traveling system being developed, Web-based online traveling information comparison is a very sophisticated and developed comparison-shopping category. The current top 3 online travelling portals are Expedia.com, Orbitz.com, and Travelocity.com.

These three portals consolidated flight, hotel, and car rental information.A consumer could book and compare a complete travel package by using any of them. They also provide search engine for numerous online travel service companies like tripadvisor.com. In addition, services like priceline.com allows a consumer to offer a price for a flight, hotel or other travel services, and vendors to compete for the business.

There are also second generation comparison-shopping services in this category like Kayak.com, which retrieval information from the top 3 portals as well as other airline companies and then compare them for consumers to find the best air travel deals. hotelicopter.com did similar things for hotel reservations.

Search Neutrality

A recent article by New York Times about the anti-trust against Google mentioned a lawsuit launched by a UK couple and owner of one of the top UK-based shopbot, Foundem.co.uk. According to them:

"in 2006, Google’s supposedly objective algorithms suddenly dropped Foundem into the netherworld of Google search results. They say Google also raised the rates Foundem had to pay to advertise alongside search results. These moves, the couple say, pushed their comparison shopping site out of view, and Google later put the spotlight on its own shopping listings."

Thiscouple raised an interesting issue of search neutrality. How to define search neutrality. According to them, search neutrality is

"the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet."

 Specifically,

"search neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. In our view, search engines should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content. Just as telephone companies are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can say, search engines should not be allowed to use their market power to control activity online." 

The idea of regulation on search control has important implications to the Web. Shall Google have impartial attitude to all Web sites it listed on its search outcome? How to define impartial here? It seems we use Google is not because Google give us impartial results, it is because Google help us find things we want to find easier compared with other search engine. As to whether this result is being manipulated by Google, most users probably do not care about. To certain extent, all search outcome are manipulated by certain algorithms. In the case of Google, it is PageRank plus some proprietary tweaks we don't know.

On the other side, US government does have regulations on search outcome in the case of American Airline. When SABRE system was found to display American Airline's flight information on top of the search outcome compared with the same route offered by other airline companies, the Congress forced it to eliminate such bias.

So the case probably will be determined by whether there is a strong evidence that Google did manipulate the search outcome to benefit its own business interests.

Fraudulent on product ratings and reviews

Though shopbot and comparison-shopping could help us find good price, the reputation of the vendor offering that price is equally important. Unfortunately, a recent article by pcworld.com revealed many fraudulent practice by online vendors to boost up their reputation in shopbots while, in reality, have a lot of consumer complaints. The reporter basically compare the ratings given on major comparison-shopping site for an online vendor with its BBB reviews and found there were a lot of discrepancies.

For example, here is a case with butterfly photo:

Our investigation showed that leading shopping engines, including Shopzilla.com, Shopping.com,PriceGrabber.com, and Yahoo Shopping, frequently award accolades to companies with spotty records. Nearly a third of the merchants that came up in our searches for popular consumer electronics on Yahoo Shopping, for example, had "unsatisfactory" ratings with the BBB.

What's the source of the problem? Shopping engines depend on customer ratings to make these recommendations--and ratings and reviews can be faked by interested parties. That isn't a new phenomenon, but unfortunately, we found evidence that some shopping engines--despite their claims to the contrary--are still being manipulated to get customers to visit certain online stores. 

When we asked Shopzilla how a company with an unsatisfactory BBB rating could earn its "Smart Choice" seal, Shopzilla spokesperson Helen Malani said, "Ratings and reviews are just one component in the shopper's decision-making process." She wouldn't say whether recommending Butterfly Photo, in retrospect, was a mistake.

Shopzilla, however, wasn't the only engine recommending Butterfly Photo. When we searched on Shopping.com for a Samsung 32-inch television, Butterfly Photo's offering again earned special attention, showing up in the search results as a "Smart Buy." The "Smart Buy" seal, according to Shopping.com, indicates that the search result is the lowest available price from a "Trusted Store." Shopping.com's sibling sites, Dealtime.com andPricetool.com, also displayed Butterfly Photo's price with the Trusted Store logo. NexTag.com and its sibling site, Calibex.com, show "Trusted Seller" logos that indicate Butterfly Photo has received positive customer ratings, displays accurate prices, and "address[es] customer service complaints quickly and fairly." 

Though even shopbot owners are aware there are fake ratings, detecting them is usually difficult. Finding duplicate ratings and comments and delete them is one method. Bad vendors could be removed from the listing. However, bad vendors soon change their names as new companies and being listed again. It is even more shocking to see one comment to the article:

Change you passwords when using these sites. I posted a very negative review of a purchase I had made at a store called Computer Geeks on PriceGrabber. The next day a nice, happy review was up with my name on it. I had used the same user name and password for both sites. To PriceGrabbers credit they did replace the glowing review with my original, you just can't see it on page two, which is inaccessible (maybe today only), and page one is loaded with 100% positive posts which appear to be just as fake as the one that replaced mine.

There are also social and economics issues in entangled with this issue. The comparison-shopping service providers has little incentive to pay a hefty cost to detect and prevent fraudulent ratings because it is not just costly but also don't generate short-term profit. However, in the long run, the reputation and credibility of shopbot service sector will be damaged if consumers found out they were cheated frequently by such information.

Byzantine, Texas: Comparison shopping for religious items

I found an interesting blog about comparison-shopping for religious items:

Byzantine, Texas: Comparison shopping for religious items

Imperfect comparison: promotions, rebates and coupons prevents directly comparison

Comparison-shopping helps consumers find best price for a product. Does that mean shopbots will eventually become the first stop of online shopping? At least for now, it is not.

Online stores use a lot of tricks to attract consumers by offering lower price than those listed by shopbots. For example, the rebates. There are a few rebate sites like ebates.com actually offer rebates for a wide range of partnering online stores. There are also quite a few deal sites offer coupon and rebate information about online stores. To name a few, dealnews.com, dealsea.com, techbargains.com, mrrebates.com, etc.

auto insurance comparison

To buy auto insurance is a complex process. There are many depends. There are no best insurance company for all drivers. It largely depends on the driver's driving history. It worth a lot of research to explore how to streamline the selection process and make individual find their best rate with much ease.

Every state government site lists agents and insurance companies by their insurance commissioner. So the state resident could file complaint. So one can look at the list and find the one has the fewest complaints. Epinion.com runs a section for consumers to review all type of insurances including auto insurance. Currently there are 92 insurance company entries. Those ratings could be misleading because many insurance companies have very few number of reviews.

There are several comparison-shopping agents specializing on insurance including auto insurance like insurance.com, insweb.com, netquote.com, and lowerratequotes.com. But some of them are merely collecting your information and then send to potential insurers.

Some innovative services by new insurance companies makes the comparison even more complex. For example, progressive.com will lower your rate if you agree to install a GPS device on your car so they can monitor your driving habit. milemeter.com will charge your premium based on the actual miles you covered in each month. So how to compare them and find the best one for one customer is really a challenge.

another shopbot launched

How many shopbots being launched every month? How many ceased to exist at the same duration?
The entry barrier for comparison-shopping service is much lowers nowadays. Retailers are aware of the advantage of being listed by a shopbot so most of them don't block probes by new shopbots. They even pay to participate those popular shopbots.


I came across a newly launched shopbot called onewayshopping today. It is a simple collection of popular price quotes by popular online retailers like drugstore.com, bestbuy.com, etc. It was launched in 2009. The shopping category includes: apparel, auto&vehicles, Babies&kids, cameras, computers, electronics, entertainment, flowers and gifts, health and beuaty, home and garden, industrial supply, jewelry and watches, musical instruments, office, pets, sprots, toys & hobbies, and video games. All have a relatively high profit margin.

An article on the evolution of shopbot

This year is the 15th anniversary of BargainFinder demonstration project. BargainFinder was one of the first shopbots launched in 1995. It was developed as a research project by then Andersen Consulting. I wrote an article about this project and was published by IEEE computer in May 2010 issue. This article also presented several challenges for the future evolution of shopbots. 


Article: "What's Next for Shopbots?," Computer, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 20-26, Apr. 2010, doi:10.1109/MC.2010.93

AquaCompare.com for Aqua Products

Aqua Compare is a shopbot dedicated for comparison-shopping for aqua products.

"Father and son team John and Peter Cunningham have launched a one of a kind website, www.AquaCompare.com, which provides aquarists with the opportunity to search and compare thousands of aquarium related products.

The Cunninghams' passion for aquariums began when, as a child, Peter won a goldfish from a local county fair. That small orange creature in a small glass bowl eventually led to tropical fish and marine aquariums. And a frustration with the lack of information and guidance for beginning aquarium hobbyists led to Aquarists Online, John and Peter's comprehensive website for aquarists. Noting the general nature of major comparison shopping websites, John and Peter then created Aqua Compare to address the needs of both aquarists and aquarium store owners.

While there is an abundance of information about aquarium setup and maintenance, those who want to become involved with this hobby may find themselves overwhelmed and confused. John and Peter have shared decades of knowledge and experience to aquarium enthusiasts via the Internet as well as two published books on the subject. They have now taken their desire to help beginners one step further with the creation of AquaCompare.

"A lot of online aquarium stores are all vying for top spot in the search engines and are attempting to draw through advertising and sponsorship," says Peter Cunningham. "Aqua Compare was designed so that everyone has a chance at getting in front of potential purchasers as well as being a site where aquarists can search, browse and find the best deals. Customers can leave feedback about the product as well as the store so that other consumers can read and learn from their experiences."

Anyone who is interested in getting started in the relaxing and enjoyable world of aquariums or even those that decided to dive in long ago will find a wealth of information at http://www.aquaristsonline.com and at http://www.aquacompare.com.
"

A shopbot for Singapore and Malaysia

ShopParadiso.com is a newly released shopbot featuring commodities in Singapore and Malaysia.

There are following features about this shopbot:

1. It only retrieve product price from sites that targeting Singapore and Malaysia shoppers.

2. It searches vendors' website instead of using data feeding because the latter don't cover 100% of vendor's inventory, according to Mr."Subaru" Barry.

Here is the description of ShopParadiso from its official statement:

"About ShopParadiso
ShopParadiso (shopparadiso.com), launched in August 2008, is the first and foremost comprehensive price comparison shopping search engine for Malaysia and Singapore region. It searches and lists thousands of products from scores of online merchants using proprietary search technology. With a team of Web search and consumer products experts, ShopParadiso is working to provide a world-class shopping search experience to the shoppers of Malaysia and Singapore. The products and services listed in ShopParadiso are sold only by their respective merchants and not by ShopParadiso."

A cool idea by Visuali.se: visualizing comparison data

Here is a newly launched (seems still in Beta test) comparison-shopping site (powered by Shopping.com) that could visualize the comparison information.

When you select a product category, all available products in this category will be displayed on the top of the page.




By clicking one of them, its information including price and technical details will be displayed in a new tab of the center page. You may select multiple products and each of them will be displayed in a new tab.



Once you want to compare them, you may click the "Click Here to View Important Product Features" and then a drop down menu appeared. You may select as many features to comparison as possible. Once you selected a feature, the information about them are displayed as bar graphs on the left or right side of the Page immediately.



When you decide the product to buy, you may click the "Buy it Here" tab and you will see all vendors that offering this product.

Though still kind of crude in design, this is a good multiple feature visual comparison shopping interface I've first see.

a comparison-shopping site created by a stay at home mom

We all know the entry barrier for comparison-shopping site is low but probably no one expects it could be created by a stay-at-home mom with no knowledge of coding and website design. Following is a news release about Shophilia.com from the Web:

Shophilia.com, a price comparison shopping website, launched on August 20, 2008. The price comparison website was created by a stay at home mom, with no prior knowledge of coding or design.

Since launching, just over one month ago, the site has been converted from html to php coding, to implement gzipping, which results in faster page loads. The site loads approximately 70% faster now, which is sure to please any shopper.

Computers with lower resolutions can shop with a better view due to new coding in place. "We are constantly working to improve the shopping experience by checking functionality from all angles. We rely on feedback from our customers," says Angela.

In the near future, the site will have new features for their "stores" tab. This section of the site contains over 4,700 stores, and soon you will be able to sort by name or number of products. It will have a first letter index with count of how many stores per first letter, and a search engine to search merchant, store by store name or keyword. "We are very excited about this feature, it will be a tremendous benefit to the consumer," says Angela.

Hurricane Ike caused outages across the web, including Shophilia.com. "Our partners are located in Texas and are still recovering. We just received an update today, and they're still without power. They said that the servers are as hot as an oven and that Centerpoint Energy is doing all that they can to restore power. I'm just thankful that they're alright," says Angela.

They have a "free shipping" tab, and can save you even more money by clicking on their "rebates, coupons and deals" tab. With the rising cost of fuel, what better time to take advantage of these features.

When you shop there, you're shopping with all of your favorite retailers, no more going from retailer to retailer or from comparison site to comparison site, now that it's all in one spot. Just in time for the Holiday season, http://www.shophilia.com, has over 5,500 stores and over 34 million products.

For additional information on the news that is the subject of this release contact Angela Meadows or visit www.shophilia.com.

About Angela Meadows:
Stay at home mom and founder of Shophilia.com

Contact:
Angela Meadows, Founder
www.Shophilia.com
1-712-432-0055 ext. 58790#

Pronto.com uses AppBeat DC

Pronto.com is a social comparison-shopping site. It allow shoppers to not only review a product but also create all kinds of product list based on their preference. This looks like an idea borrowed from Amazon. It also allow people to make friends with each other by making their product rating and list public.

In early September 8 news brief:

Crescendo Networks, Ltd., the recognized performance leader in accelerating and optimizing Web applications, today announced that Pronto.com is using AppBeat(TM) DC to ensure the performance, efficiency and availability of its Web applications for shoppers worldwide. Pronto.com is the Web's fastest growing comparison and social shopping site with more than 15 million monthly users, 70,000 Web retailers and 70 million products. It is an operating business of IAC, which owns more than 35 Internet businesses including Ask.com, Citysearch, Match.com and Evite.

So what is AppBeat DC? it is essentially a second generation load balancing solution. Using the golden rule of division of labor, it separate the application task with overhead processing. It also using the dedicated thread to process the aggregated same http requests, e.g. a keyword search on "iPod." Compared with previous load balancing solution, this one is more intelligent and could conduct global load balancing.

Anyway, it seems Pronto is experiencing fast growth and felt the needs to increase its system scalability.

Measuring the satisfaction of comparison-shoppers

Recently, Foresee Results, a consulting company founded by Professor Claes Fornell from University of Michigan, was engaged into the measurement of the ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index) for Shopping.com and eBay.com users.According to ForeSee Results, customer satisfaction could be used to reflect changes in company revenue, stock price, etc. It seems some statistics method like SEC (Structural Equational Modeling) is used to establish the relationship among them.

According to TC: "mySupermarket, which has been around since 2006, claims to be the first comparison service that allows users to compare a cart of multiple items across retailers—in its case, groceries, across British supermarket chains Tesco, Sainsbury’s Ocado & ASDA."

In addition, top online grocery sites are:

Alice.com: consumer oriented personal shopper, could help find best deals for groceries including coupon and free shipping deals.
Amazon.com: offer a wide range of groceries, subscription for regularly delivery is free
MySupermarket.co.uk: UK-based comparison shopping
Freshdirect.com: mainly for New York metro, food from local farms and dairies, organic.
Netgrocer.com: has been in this category for a long time, mainly for health and beauty, organic food, babyfood, delivers to APO/FPO (military) addresses
AllSuperStore.com: offer standard grocery store items
ShopFoodEx.com: bulk order, large inventory, seasonal specials
ExpatExpress.com: specializing on oversea delivery
GoBioFood.com: organic and high quality food
Safeway.com: cover many US areas because of its physical presence

Comparison-Shopping for Business Financial Service

Transparent Financial Services (TransFS), operator of the only comparison shopping website for business financial services.

"TransFS is an online comparison shopping business for small business financial services. Think of us as an Priceline or Travelocity, but rather than helping people compare and purchase airplane tickets, we help small businesses compare and purchase financial services (such as payroll processing, credit card processing and business loans)."

The Purchase of Ciao by Microsoft

Today, news released that Microsoft buys European comparison shopping site, Ciao, for $486M.

Based in Munich, Germany, Ciao operates consumer review and comparison shopping portals in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the U.K.

In June, Greenfield made a definitive agreement to be acquired by Quadrangle for $426 million, and must now pay the consortium a $5 million fee to terminate that agreement.

Microsoft plans that the Ciao business will report to Rajat Taneja, general manager for worldwide commercial search at Microsoft.

There are several reason makes Microsoft in this move.

The major motivation was compete with Google and Yahoo on search market share. Earlier this year, Microsoft pucrhased Jellyfish.com for cashback service. The acquisition of Ciao and its established user base may allow Microsoft to extend that approach to Europe.

Yahoo has already acquired a French comparison shopping service, Kelkoo, which now operates in ten European countries, and also drives Yahoo's own-brand comparison shopping service in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K. -- and Taiwan.

another meta-search shopbot

Another meta-search shopbot launched from Newark, DE today. ComparisonShop.com could simultaneously search the top ten shopbots with one search keyword. But it seems the site is merely a shell that it will lead you to the specific shopbot site without aggregating the data by itself.

As any college student knows, textbook has an inflated price if you buy from campus book store. For the same book, one can find a copy with a fraction of the price charged by campus store from the Web. Amazon third party sellers, eBay's half.com, all provide convenient search. But dedicated shopbot for books give one an edge in terms of aggregating all these prices from amazon, half.com and other online book stores. Specialized college textbook shopbots include campusbooks.com. Bookfinder.com provides a nice special page for searching textbook.

There are also shopbot for general book price comparison like addall.com.

College related websites like cheapscholar.org used comparison engine powered by campusbooks.com to help visitor find good price for textbooks: http://cheapscholar.org/2010/05/14/textbook-comparison-shopping-tool/