Cataloging products is extremely difficult. While most comparison shopping engines require merchants to include manufacturer part numbers (MPN), universal product codes (UPC), etc., not all merchants follow the rules and there are many ‘bundles’ which are assigned fictitious unique identifiers. Because of this, all shopping comparison engines run into categorization problems and end up throwing a lot of resources towards solving the problem.
Shopzilla today announced the launch of zLabs which showcases the company’s investment into R&D to advance comparison shopping search technology. “The first research project to be featured within zLabs is Robozilla, a fully functioning version of Shopzilla wherein all the clustering and alignment of products, prices, availability and images from various merchants is done in a completely automated way. “
I’m just learning about Robozilla now, so I’ll post an update later.
