Traffic/Sales from Comparison Shopping Engines

[kgam]

Do you have any experience with Comparison Shopping Engines like Google Base, Shopzilla, Shopping.com, etc?

Did they drive traffic? How about conversions? Any suggestions on which ones to use or tips?

We used Froogle years ago (now Google Base) but did not really see any benefit to it. However, it was free, so that was hard to complain about. I am considering these again now as sales are slowing due to the economy.

Thanks for the help.

[Jack_Hughes]

Not much action still on Google Base... haven't tried the others but doubt they work any better. Being very nice to your existing customers would probably be a better short term strategy.

[HugeNerd]

I occasionally see conversions coming from these comparison shopping engines -- we don't actively list on them so I am not sure if we are just getting spidered/scraped for content or if they just go off of indecies like the DMOZ or what. From what I can tell, we clicks or sales when we are the bottom line price shown for a product. So unless you are absolutely the lowest price, its probably not worth your time or money.

[pbradish]

I've been testing CSE's lately. I haven't gathered enough data to make an educated decision (only been one month) about which to keep and which to drop but I will say that Google Base, Yahoo Shopping, NexTag, BizRate, Shopzilla, and Shopping all bring in targeted traffic - though some MUCH more than others.

Every single CSE has generated at least 1 sale for us this month (not bad considering the traffic volume they drive). The CPC ends up being comparable to PPC. It's too early to say much about the ROI.

CSE's aren't necessarily for the impulse buys for us though. I'm more concerned about branding (which CSE's do a nice job of).

[mattb]

Top 3 for us in regards to revenue in descending order.
Nextag
Shopping.com
Google Base

[MadeWillis]

Google now shows Base listings within the search results for many queries. I've seen nice increases since they started this. I also noticed a drop in other CSEs lately, but the big boys include (in no specific order)

Shopping.com
Pricegrabber.com
Shopzilla.com
Nextag.com

Most of these guys have partner sites just like Google and Yahoo. So submitting to these will get you listed on many other CSEs.