ComparisonEngines

According to Reuters, PriceGrabber is up for sale.

PriceGrabber’s parent, Experian, had been hit hard by the credit crunch.

As explained by thisTelegraph article.

Experian’s problems are not of its making, though. Its most important clients are financial institutions who use the company’s services to vet prospective credit card and mortgage customers, for example. Because the banks are sharply scaling back their lending programmes, demand for Experian’s data is drying up.

From October 16, 2007 – January 16, 2008, Experian dropped aprx. 24% (here are historical prices). But the stock has rallied since that low to wipe out those losses over the last month (and is beating the DJIA and FTSE).

Not sure if the sale of PriceGrabber is meant to shore up Experian’s finances in the face of troubled times in the core business unit, but that hypothesis makes some sense. The question now is who would buy PriceGrabber. Need to think that one over.

If we comparison shop for products, online education, travel, and mortgages, why not presidential candidates?

And according to PriceGrabber, Bill Richardson is my man.

Answer a bunch of multiple choice questions through Candidate Match, covering issues related to foreign policy, national security, the economy, social/healthcare, and science/environment, and PriceGrabber will tell you which candidate is your best match. The only thing that’s missing is an ability to weight a certain issue – if national security is more important to you than science/environment, then that could change which candidate is your perfect match (and in case you were wondering, Bill Richardson is not my perfect match…but PriceGrabber was close).

You can also rate and discuss candidates.

As we step into the election year, I’m sure PriceGrabber will get some great buzz because of this addition.

PriceGrabber has a snazzy new design (they are A/B testing, so you might not see it yet). Lots to discuss, and I don’t have time right now, but I wanted to highlight 2 big changes:
-There’s a really BIG search box at the top of the page
-PriceGrabber is pushing Storefronts, an incredible, but little covered program

New look:

Old look:

Thanks for the heads up, Mike!

Congrats to the PriceGrabber team for landing CNET. Seems that PriceGrabber will now be the exclusive provider of shopping comparison engine listings for CNET (including MySimon and ZDnet). Currently, CNET runs its own shopping comparison engine listings program while MySimon syndicates tech listings from CNET and gets the rest of its listings (Home & Garden/Soft Goods) from Shopping.com.

Here’s the email sent from CNET’s Joe Gillespie which details the change. You’ll hear more from me about this after I’ve talked to CNET and PriceGrabber:

We’d like to inform you of a change at CNET.com that is going to impact our relationship. After careful consideration, we have decided to transition the management of our CPC (cost per click) listings programs to our strategic partner, PriceGrabber.com. This partnership will provide you continued access to the powerful CNET.com audience while simplifying the process of managing your marketing programs.

After the transition, only the price listings for current listings partners of PriceGrabber.com will appear on CNET and its affiliates (ZDNet and mySimon). If you are not currently a listings partner with PriceGrabber.com, you will need to setup an account with them in time for the transition. To do this, please contact:

[left out for privacy]
As a result of this transition, your merchant listings agreement with CNET.com will be terminated as of the date of the transition to PriceGrabber.com, which we anticipate will happen between August 27 and September 1, 2007. We will notify you of the actual date of the transition as we get closer. An invoice for your August activity and a statement will be sent to you on September 6th. The statement will show the current amount due for August and all non-current outstanding amounts due. Contact information for the CNET Billing and Collections team will be provided in case you have questions on your invoice or statement. Please make every effort to pay all outstanding amounts to ensure a smooth transition.

We very much appreciate the support and business you have given CNET.com over the years and we hope you will continue to leverage the CNET audience through PriceGrabber.com. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at www.cnet.com/partners.

Sincerely,

Joe Gillespie
Executive Vice President, CNET.com

In a sign of the times, PriceGrabber launched ShopGreen. All items in this section are PriceGrabber certified eco-friendly – think organic, biodegradable, energy saving, etc. Full details can be found here.

PriceGrabber is donating 5% of all profits from sales through ShopGreen to user selected charities.

I’m hoping to talk to the editor behind the section soon. Will keep you posted as I learn more.

December 14, 2005 Update: Read my latest coverage of Experian’s acquisition of PriceGrabber.

Ok, I’m impressed with PriceGrabber Autos because it’s not just another lead gen system. As opposed to collecting an email address and sending it to 10 dealers, PriceGrabber qualifies the lead by forcing potential buyers to jump through a number of hoops. Because of this, the consumer gets motivated dealers bidding for business and the dealer gets a buyer, not just a lead.

I met with Darren Davis, Business Director for Autos, at PriceGrabber a couple weeks ago. Talking with Darren was a blast as he has some great stories from the early days of the internet boom, having worked at Autobytel (8th employee) from ’95 – ’98 and Goto.com from ’98 – ’03…

A little introduction…
“What [our Autos section] does well is get customers 3 or more quotes from dealers they prescribe – they tell us who to invite and who not to invite. These quotes are every bit as competitive as if you walked into a dealership because the dealers know that other dealers are providing quotes. Also, the dealers want to work with the sites that do more to pre-qualify the buyers.”

“PriceGrabber’s Auto section is the most customer focused, dealer friendly car site. We scrub our customers more than anyone else out there. We actually make it hard to get your request while others have tried to increase volume. We have no problem showing a big, ugly stop sign as a warning. Because of this, dealers know that when they get a PriceGrabber request, that person is going to buy, it’s just a question of whether that person is going to buy from you. There are a lot of garbage providers out there. We are the exact opposite. We’d rather send a dealer 1 request a month from someone who is going to buy a car vs. 10 requests from people who won’t buy.”

“[After customizing a car], the customer has to answer a couple simple questions. First, the customer has to specify exactly which dealer he wants to compete for his business. You can refine the choices by distance [and specify that you only want to see dealers within a 50 mile radius] or you may have already talked to a couple dealers [and want to skip them]. In this way, the customer has complete control. Next, we verify the customer’s contact phone number. The user gets an automated call with an authorized code. [Darren demonstrated this on the spot.] You also have to create a user name and password as your quotes appear through PriceGrabber.com.”

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