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

Kelkoo Actually Sold

November 21, 2008

Kelkoo has been searching for a home for over a year (some great links in the comments).  According to TechCrunch, Kelkoo has sold to a UK Private Equity firm for less than 100mm Euro (where the heck is the Euro symbol, WordPress?).  In the TechCrunch post is the internal announcement from Kelkoo.  TechCrunch also points to a blog post by the (obviously not happy with Yahoo!) former Kelkoo CEO, Pierre Chappaz.  Here’s the babel fishd version of the post.

Yahoo! originally bought Kelkoo for 475mm Euro.  Ouch.

2 Comments | Yahoo! Shopping | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Brian Smith

Shopping.com’s Related Products

June 15, 2008

Excuse the image sizing issue. I’m trying out a new system and it’s not pretty. For now, you can just click on the image to see the screenshot in all its glory.

Shopping.com is now displaying related items on product pages. And as opposed to some shopping engines which seem to just be sticking up links for SEO purposes, Shopping.com has a more elegant (although obviously simple) integration:

Shopping.com Feature

Shopzilla has related searches:
Shopzilla Product Page

Yahoo! Shopping has ‘shoppers who viewed this item also viewed…’ I think this is the best integration:
Yahoo! Shopping customers who bought this

Smarter has Similar Products:

Pronto has Related Products:

And of course, TheFind & Like.com provide much richer ‘related products’ integration.

Become, NexTag, Google Product Search, PriceGrabber, and SortPrice do not have a related products section.

Leave a Comment » | Shopping.com, Yahoo! Shopping | Permalink
Posted by Brian Smith

Yahoo! Shopping Sports Sleek New Homepage

April 12, 2008

Yahoo! Shopping was running a test on a new homepage design, but it now seems to be official.

Old look:
Yahoo Shopping homepage design

New look:
Yahoo Shopping homepage

Sadly the rest of the site hasn’t changed. But you have to start somewhere…

Leave a Comment » | Yahoo! Shopping | Permalink
Posted by Brian Smith

Shopping Engines Seeing Green

November 18, 2007

No, I’m not talking about dollars, I’m talking about saving the environment.

Yahoo Shopping now has a Green Shopping section (to complement the incredible Yahoo! Green). PriceGrabber has Shop Green. TheFind has TheFind Green. MSN Shopping has Shop Green.

While I’ll let these companies quibble about the size of their carbon footprints, what’s important is that these ‘mini-sites’ can be extremely effective merchandising efforts. The other shopping engines all have green products in their databases. I’d expect to see additional ‘green’ launches in the near future.

P.S. Joe, Yahoo! Green has a link to a Green Gift Guide. You’ve gotta get a more prominent link in there back to Yahoo Green Shopping. Pristine Planet might be a good site, but that should be your link!

2 Comments | Comparison Engines, MSN Shopping, TheFind, Yahoo! Shopping | Permalink
Posted by Brian Smith

Yahoo! Shopping Launches Coupon Central

November 6, 2007

Via the Yahoo! Shopping Blog, Yahoo! has web 2.0d/social networked the coupon experience with the launch of Yahoo! Coupon Center Beta. Share coupons (email or IM), write comments, vote (thumbs up/down), and even save. 1936 merchants are listed right now. Check it out.

Leave a Comment » | Comparison Engines, Coupons, Yahoo! Shopping | Permalink
Posted by Brian Smith

Seasonal Price Increases Part Two

November 6, 2007

A lot of people missed the emails sent by the shopping engines about seasonal rate increases, so here’s a quick summary:

Become.com – no rate increase
Yahoo! Shopping – no rate increase
Google Product Search – free
TheFind – free
Pronto – not holiday related, but there will be some adjustments, both up and down (Nov. 15)
Smarter.com – 20% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 – Dec. 31)
Shopzilla – 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 12 – Dec. 31)
PriceGrabber – 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 – Jan. 15)
NexTag – 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 – Jan. 2)
Shopping.com – 10-25% rate increase depending on category (Nov. 15 – Dec. 31)

Leave a Comment » | Become, Comparison Engines, NexTag, PriceGrabber, Pronto, Smarter.com, TheFind, Yahoo! Shopping | Permalink
Posted by Brian Smith

Yahoo! Adds Shop by Color

September 13, 2007

Before everyone takes this post the wrong way, yes, I was poking fun at how Yahoo! made a big deal out of Shop by Color in a press release, considering that other shopping engines have had this for a while, but I wasn’t poking fun at the actual funtionality. Shopping by color makes shopping fun. And yes, I’m being very serious. At the same time, merchants are horrible at listing all color options in data feeds, so this is a great benefit to them, too. All around, a great addition to Yahoo! Shopping. Shopzilla and Shopping.com, engines that have to pay for their traffic, should be adding features like this to make the user experience more attractive. Yes, they will still have to pay the gatekeeper (Google) for the initial click, but anything these shopping engines can do to convince users to come back directly the next time is worth it.

15 months after Shopwiki launched Shop by Color…
11 months after Become launched Shop by Color…
10 months after Smarter launched Shop by Color…
9 months after TheFind launched Shop by Color…

Yahoo! launches Shop by Color as a result of an internal coding competition.

yahoo shopping by color

Leave a Comment » | Comparison Engines, Yahoo! Shopping | Permalink
Posted by Brian Smith

Yahoo Pushing Vertical Search (Yahoo! Shortcuts)

December 19, 2006

Yahoo! Shortcuts must be working for searchers and for Yahoo! Starting last week, I noticed Yahoo! prompting me a lot more to search for coupons, flights, hotels, and movie showtimes. While shortcuts have been around for a while, this is the first time I can remember Yahoo! teaching me use them.

I’m used to getting this after a generic search:
hotels

But these showed up when I went to search.yahoo.com or my.yahoo.com:

yahoo coupon search

yahoo flight search

yahoo movies

If you want to learn more about these vertical search results creeping into the main results, check out the series I wrote for SearchDay: Yahoo! Shortcuts, Google OneBox, Microsoft Instant Answers, and Ask Smart Answers

Leave a Comment » | Comparison Engines, Yahoo! Shopping | Permalink
Posted by Brian Smith

Darth Tater – Ringing in the Holidays at Yahoo! Shopping

November 30, 2005

Talked with Rob Solomon, General Manager and Vice President of Yahoo! Shopping, for a quick holiday shopping update…

On Traffic…
“On Thursday, we saw year over year traffic growth of 63% and on Friday we saw growth of 52%. We were expecting growth in the 20-30% range.”

On Hot Products…
“Xbox 360 is an incredibly popular search term, but no one has it. You can buy it at auction for 2-4x list price [Maybe Yahoo! Shopping should put a link up to Yahoo! Auctions on that search results page] iPod nanos, and the iPod itself. Digital cameras. Also, shoes are very popular, with Puma as a stand out brand, rising to the top 20.

On Popular Toys…
-Roboraptor – a robotic dinosaur, this year’s Robosapien
-Darth vader voice changing mask
-The Star Wars Mr. Potato Head Dolls – Darth Tater and Spud Trooper
-Leapfrog products
-‘Shout’ Dancing Elmo
-Bratz dolls.

On the Shoposphere…
“When we launched, there were a lot of great lists created across different themes. Now, a lot of holiday thematic lists are being created; top holiday movie lists, toy lists, wish lists, things people lust after, things people want. We had theorized that themes would be important – the holiday season, Valentine’s day, etc., and people seem to be tapping into [that idea]. We’re really pleased with how it’s taken off. It’s exceeding expectations and being viewed in bigger numbers than expected.”

“We also hoped it would tap into the long tail of products as we now have 100m products on Yahoo! Shopping, and if you look into the lists you will see a good assortment of products that you never would know existed. As people consume and syndicate their lists, it will help with retention and it will spread the word [about the offerings on Yahoo! Shopping]. The reason we created the Shoposphere was to take our notion of Yahoo! Shopping and extend it anywhere. This is a big part of our strategy.”

“Pick lists are definitely a twist on traditional reviews as reviews used to be a one to one thing. [The Shoposphere] is the next generation of how people are reviewing products. It’s turning into a blog meets review platform. We think this is one of the products that will kick off a very rapid phase of innovation from big players in Q1.”

More Yahoo! Shopping Stories:
Comparison Shopping – Important Holiday Season Happenings – November 26, 2005
The Shoposphere – A Closer Look at the New Yahoo! Shopping – November 15, 2005
Integration of Shopping Coupons – October 14, 2005
Interview with Chris Saito (Yahoo! Shopping) on the launch of Yahoo! Shopping Web Services – August 4, 2005
Interview with Rob Solomon, GM & VP Yahoo! Shopping – July 18, 2005

1 Comment | Comparison Engines, Metrics/Data, Yahoo! Shopping | Permalink
Posted by Brian Smith

« Previous Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 203 other followers