ConsumerSearch.com Sold to About for $33m

by Brian Smith, on May 7th, 2007


ConsumerSearch.com was sold to About for $33m in cash, according to the NYTimes. Congrats to Derek, Max, and the rest of the crew!

I’ve mentioned ConsumerSearch here just once, but talked to the company a couple times as I still think there’s a great opportunity to help people understand what to buy – not just how much to pay and which merchant is the most trustworthy. I also recommended that a number of newer shopping engines team up with ConsumerSearch to syndicate their reviews.

Looks like ConsumerSearch started to monetize their traffic a lot more over the last year…I see Google Adsense ads, Shopping.com links, Shopzilla links, Chitika modules, eBay links, and Amazon links. In some cases they took this to the extreme (as I think some pages are littered with too many ads), but I’m sure About will help them clean up a bit.

Not sure what this means in terms of the shopping comparison engine relationships that ConsumerSearch currently maintains, but About uses PriceGrabber for its shopping site, so I’d expect ConsumerSearch to eventually make the move to them. With 3m monthly uniques (according to the NYTimes article), it’s not going to make or break Shopping.com, Shopzilla, or PriceGrabber, but it’s worth a footnote.

At the same time, it helps to put a price on competitors like Reviewed.com.

Tags: Comparison Engines


davidj said

Never heard of the site before today. Any clue what kind of business these folks have prior to today? # of employees, revenue or profit?

David

May 7th, 2007 at 1:56 pm |

EarlyMiser said

No it doesn’t.
Consumersearch.com is a Pagerank 7 site that is in the Alexa top 10,000. It’s heavily trafficked and heavily used. Reviewed.com is Page Rank 4 with an Alexa ranking of 940,000. To put that in perspectitive I have throw away sites that get more traffic. In terms of branding – reviewed.com has multiple generic domains that have varying levels of traffic. Consumersearch.com is a site with quite a bit of traction in the marketplace. There’s no comparing the two really.

May 7th, 2007 at 4:16 pm |

The Chitika Blog » Blog Archive » Chitika Publisher Acquired for $33 Million said

[...] m, one of our favorite publisher clients, was sold to About for $33m in cash, according to this post on ComparisonEngines.com (via NYTimes) announcing [...]

May 7th, 2007 at 7:03 pm |

Brian Smith said

EarlyMiser -
Reviewed.com is made up of DigitalCameraInfo.com, CamcorderInfo.com, and a host of new sites (PrinterInfo.com, EasyCamcorders, EasyDigitalCameras, WirelessInfo.com). I’m not sure I’d call their main sites ‘throw away’ sites.
-b

May 8th, 2007 at 6:43 am |

EarlyMiser said

Based on the generic domains and moderate Page Rank and Alexa Rank I would. Some of those sites have an Alexa rank over 1,000,000 (which effectively means almost no one uses them). The domains are generic keyword domains that probably lack basic trademark protection since they are merely descriptive domains. My point is that launching a bunch of generic sites (that are powered by a pricegrabber co-branded site) isn’t as valuable as what consumersearch.com did. I can launch similar sites with about 2 days work.

An Alexa rankings progressions are not quite logarithmic but the progression isn’t mathematical either. It’s far more difficult to do what consumersearch.com did. An Alexa Ranking of 10,000 indicates serious traffic.

May 8th, 2007 at 8:23 am |

PriceMan said

With a alexa of 10,000 there is room to grow this site. Time will tell if this was a good move for about.com.

If they are able to set up a soild back end it will be a Huge winner if not it will be a big loser :) .

Good luck about and we will look for some big PR and changes to bring in new traffic.

May 8th, 2007 at 11:15 am |

EarlyMiser said

Missed the best part! In cash! Wow that’s a great deal for them. I assumed it was the standard 90/10 deal but a cash deal like that is great for them.

May 8th, 2007 at 11:28 am |

sgrnmkt said

I wonder if they will categorize topics and reviews the way consumersearch was doing. For instance I arrived to this site through consumer search from a blog article at: specializedmountainbikes.weebly.com/index.html. From clicking on a random review. Weird!

September 5th, 2007 at 2:07 pm |