Yahoo! Product Submit Replaced by PriceGrabber

January 11, 2010

This morning, Yahoo! Product Submit merchants were notified that as of March 11, 2010, Yahoo! Shopping is partnering with PriceGrabber. At that time, merchants will no longer be able to submit to Yahoo! Product Submit to list products on Yahoo! Shopping, but must submit through PriceGrabber. If merchants don’t have an account with PriceGrabber and want to make sure their listings remain live on Yahoo! Shopping after March 11, they should sign up with PriceGrabber ASAP.

View the email notification.

Yahoo! has released this help page that will answer most questions.

This is a bittersweet end to Yahoo! Shopping, considering the effort they made to revamp the site in 2007-2008, but not surprising given the Bing/Yahoo! search deal. I assumed that Bing Cashback would replace Yahoo! Product Submit, so I got that one wrong. Congrats to Sean and the PriceGrabber team for grabbing this deal in a crowded market (Shopping.com, Shopzilla, and NexTag all have partner programs).

PriceGrabber can and should play up this partnership. PriceGrabber has hundreds of partners, and I believe this would be the third partnership involving another well know or big shopping engine brand: AOL Search/Shopping and MySimon being the others (yes, there are some smaller deals, but I think these are the ones that count). Yahoo! Shopping consistently is one of the most trafficked shopping engines, but merchants should know that while consumers might flock to Yahoo! Shopping (because of incredible exposure throughout Yahoo! Search and smaller vertical sites like Yahoo! Tech), SingleFeed’s stats (covering hundreds of merchants) show that merchants don’t get the traffic and sales that you might expect from such a big name with such high traffic numbers. I have a feeling this is because of Yahoo! Shopping’s focus on brand name advertising for the big guys through graphical ads (hat tip to Colin) as well as the many Yahoo! Search Marketing ads that take the focus away from merchant product listings. So this is a nice win, but if you’re a PriceGrabber merchant, don’t expect your traffic and sales to double overnight because of this deal.

8 Comments | AOL Shopping, PriceGrabber, Yahoo! Shopping | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Brian Smith

PriceGrabber Lands AOL Shopping Deal

April 3, 2007

From the email sent to PriceGrabber merchants:

PriceGrabber.com is proud to announce a strategic partnership with AOL. PriceGrabber will become the exclusive comparison shopping partner for AOL Shopping, providing an extensive catalog of thousands of merchants and millions of products. PriceGrabber merchant partners will benefit from a marked increase in already highly qualified traffic and placement on one of the world’s premier Internet destinations. We expect this increase in traffic to have a positive effect on partner ROI and continue to illustrate our value proposition to all partners. Building and strengthening our respected distribution network is yet another way we are able to continue to be the most trusted, innovative, and effective comparison shopping service. PriceGrabber’s position as AOL’s exclusive comparison shopping partner truly indicates the leadership position we have taken in the landscape of Internet shopping. We are very excited for the launch of our AOL partnership and know that this strategic alliance will create a significant increase in demand for our merchant offers.

This new partnership will provide a nice cushion if? when? PriceGrabber loses the Ask.com deal to Pronto (I can’t imagine this not happening, it’s just a matter of when Pronto is ready for such a deal).

While I’ve heard that clicks from AOL provide a very small percentage of Shopzilla’s revenues (Shopzilla is the current AOL Shopping partner), it’s still a potential blow to Shopzilla as the company is trying to recover from the potholes over the last quarter. Part of me wants to say that this is part of a strategy to cut down on poor performing partners, but Shopzilla continues to provide high conversion rates for the merchants I talk to/work with.

So where was Google when all this happened? Back in December of 2005, when AOL partnered with Google, I thought that Shopzilla might get replaced by Froogle. However, with Google’s focus on Base as opposed to Froogle, I guess it’s hard to justify a partnership as Base doesn’t have a monetization component (at least not yet).

3 Comments | AOL Shopping, Comparison Engines, PriceGrabber | Permalink
Posted by Brian Smith

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