What is a Shopping Search Engine?
A shopping search engine is a tool that allows shoppers to compare the prices, shipping options, and services provided by multiple retailers on a single webpage. The goal is to identify the merchant that offers the best deal.
Shopping search engines are excellent for e-commerce merchants to promote their products because the people using them are already interested in buying and are just looking for the best price.
Now let's dig in!
The Advantages of Shopping Search Engines for E-commerce Companies
Shopping search engines provide several general advantages, such as:
- Shopping search engines enable you to expand your reach outside your website. This way, shopping search engines allow you to find new clients.
- Your conversions will also be improved. Because a potential consumer will only visit your website after seeing an image of the product, a price, and other information, including who you are, on a shopping search engine. You have a better chance of converting since customers are more inclined to click on listings they like.
- Shopping search engines have a distinct edge over marketplaces. When a consumer purchases one of your items from a marketplace, they become a customer of that marketplace. This makes it hard for you to interact with them meaningfully in the future. Alternatively, you can convert them into a repeat customer using a shopping search engine which makes the customer yours.
- You may use shopping search engines to find out who your competitors are. With so many new companies appearing every day, it might be challenging to keep track of who is swiftly ascending the rankings within your industry. Shopping search engines might help you find new competition.
- You can always benefit and get inspired by online shopping statistics to create a solid strategy for your shopping search engine journey. Below you may see the usage of price comparison websites in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2017 by age group. It is a good idea to see your audience before starting a business in an area.
Above, you may see the worldwide desktop market share of leading search engines from January 2010 to January 2022 by Statista.
So let's start with the industry giant. Keep reading.
1. Google Shopping
Google Shopping, formerly known as Google Product Search or Froogle, is one of the largest and most popular shopping search engines that allow users to search for items on online shopping websites and compare prices from various suppliers.
Consumers may access Google Shopping by searching for things directly on the platform's website, shopping.google.com. You may also access the service by performing a regular Google search for an item in a web browser and tapping or clicking on the Shopping option underneath the search bar.
PROS
- You can use its many filters, such as "search nearby," which allows you to find the item you are looking for in your area with the exact address and a map result.
- Businesses may use the service to appear several times on Google's Search Engine Results Page as a text-only result, a shopping result, and a website result. This might lead to more engagement and income.
CONS
- Google Shopping has strict shipping regulations. Google prefers businesses that ship things quickly. It's hard to compete if you don't process orders on the same day and have a transport time of 3-4 days.
- Google Shopping is fantastic for customers. They can make price comparisons directly on Google without having to navigate to multiple websites. Retailers, on the other hand, are unlikely to succeed if their prices are not the lowest.
- Considering the size of Google Shopping, expecting high visibility and volume is logical. But it's impossible to stand out from the crowd without bidding on your items very high unless you provide the lowest price.
PRICE
Google Shopping charges a fixed percentage markup on the cost-per-click (CPC) paid in the Google auction. This is the cost charged for putting Shopping ads. In practice, the bids are subtracted from the margin before they are submitted to the auction.
The auction is set up so that businesses spend just what is required to outbid the next highest bidder and do not compete with their own advertising provided via another CSS.
As a result, following the auction, Google Shopping recalculates and reapplies the margin on the bids. Google Shopping charges no extra costs for its Google-quality consulting services.
2. Bing Shopping
Bing Shopping is a product search and discovery service that saves time by grouping items from many merchants on a single page. It harnesses the power of Bing to offer product results–including photographs and product data.
You can compare prices and also, products can be filtered. Purchases are made through the seller's website.
Bing operates in the same way as Google does. They list items in Bing Shopping and on Bing's search result pages. If you're pleased with Google Shopping, you might as well list on Bing Shopping to get some extra clients who use Bing as their primary search engine.
You can see a quick comparison between Google Shopping and Bing Shopping below:
PROS
- Because Bing is used by fewer people than Google, you will have less competition. Bing shopping works by a bidding auction, and lesser competition implies cheaper cost-per-clicks (CPCs). As a result, it usually produces a more significant ROI than Google as well.
- The good thing about Bing Shopping is that if you already have Google Shopping set up in your Google Ads Account, it's pretty simple to set up. You may immediately integrate your Google Shopping feed into your Bing Merchant Center.
- Sellers set spending limitations and other parameters to guarantee that their budget is spent wisely.
- Discount offers, connections to neighboring retailers where products are in stock, and customer service information can be added to ads.
- Bing users are more wealthy and established. Because of Bing's greater relative presence on desktop computers, its audience is somewhat skewed toward white-collar workers—a desirable group to target.
- According to the data on Bing shopping users by Microsoft, the majority of Bing users are college-educated, married, and have children, while 42 percent are in the top quarter of income earners.
CONS
- Bing's smaller search pool might save you money, but it also means you're missing out on potential customers.
- Their interface is more complex and less adaptable.
- There are fewer options for automated bidding.
- Additional features are coming out slowly.
PRICE
Clicks from the Product Listings section of the Shopping tab are free; retailers do not need to pay for them. Please keep in mind that they do not accept new merchant feeds during certain seasons of the year, such as the Christmas season. So be sure you get your name on the list as soon as possible.
3. Pinterest
Pinterest is sometimes disregarded by marketers, yet it may be one of the most effective platforms for increasing brand recognition, clicks, and sales. Being a popular social network, Pinterest is also a popular shopping search engine that allows users to buy and compare products quickly.
For example, suppose you search for sunglasses. In that case, you will obtain different results from which you can easily verify product information, pricing, etc.
If you want to generate sales on Pinterest quickly, Pinterest Ads might be your path to success.
Pinterest's weekly conversions shot up by 300% the previous year, with an increase in 'add-to-cart' and 'checkout' attributed conversions, so it might be a beneficial shopping search engine that you can use for your e-commerce.
PROS
- It's easy to use and doesn't require any special knowledge. And Pinterest has a cool feature where users can easily scroll through the page to see similar items.
- You can get instant price information for each product by using filters to speed up your search.
- When you click on an item, it shows you the information you need. If you like it, you can simply navigate to the product page and complete your purchase.
- Pinterest Analytics is jam-packed with useful insights, such as which Pins have generated the most hits for your company. By evaluating this data, you may gain an idea of the sort of content that converts with your audience.
- Pinterest Catalogs are the easiest way to turn all of the products listed on your e-commerce site into shoppable Pins.
- Promoted Pins are one of the simplest methods to get your content in front of more people since they appear higher up and more frequently in search results.
CONS
- Pinterest traffic is appealing to a very specialized target.
- Images that are pinned to Pinterest boards must adhere to strict quality standards.
- There are additional size criteria to meet. You may use tools and software to automatically scale your visuals to make them Pinterest-compatible; however, this may alter the image's viewpoint.
- What works on your blog or website won't work here, so you'll need to spend the time designing Pinterest-specific visuals to increase your profile on this platform.
- There are legal implications to consider. If you didn't create the content, always get permission before posting it on your board.
- Pinterest is tough to fully automate. Pinterest for business only provides customers with minimal scheduling and tracking capabilities. This makes it impossible to save time by planning your pins ahead of time.
- There are various solutions that make this possible, but many of them are expensive and go beyond what the average business needs - especially in the early days of this platform.
PRICE
Using Pinterest for e-commerce is free!
4. Shopzilla
Shopzilla is one of the best shopping search engines in the business. Users can do a direct search using the search bar, or they can simply browse by department. It also has a "Trends" option for you to see the products currently trending.
Searching leads to a results page with a lot of information. There are large photos of the products, and there is plenty of space for product details. You can also use several filters when searching for items online.
E-commerce companies can use Shopzilla to advertise their products.
To list items in Shopzilla, you must do the following:
- Create an account.
- Sort all products into categories.
- Create a data feed and structure it according to Shopzilla's requirements.
- Use the merchant center to upload the feed.
- Process the feed and deposit funds into your merchant account.
- Check back frequently to check that the goods are appropriately listed.
PROS
- You can bid at three different levels: category, sub-category, and product.
- It employs a smart pricing mechanism in which CPC is changed based on traffic quality.
- Shopzilla is part of the Connexity network, which means that companies that use Shopzilla also get access to other Connexity sites, PriceGrabber and Become.
CONS
- Products are classified as "Catalog" or "Non-catalog" depending on the availability of manufacturer SKUs.
- All goods demand a minimum bid of $4.
- Product advertisements appear rapidly and are eliminated after the monthly spending limit is achieved.
PRICE
Shopzilla uses a pay-per-click(CPC) approach. When opening an account, merchants pay a $50 refundable deposit that goes toward CPC expenses. The CPC rate is determined by a minimum bid that varies by category and changes throughout the year. The higher a company bids, the higher its items will show on the listing.
5. Yahoo Shopping
Yahoo is a website that is not as popular as it used to be, but it still gets a lot of traffic. For this reason, you may check out Yahoo Shopping as well to benefit your e-commerce.
It has many features, including cashback deals, a price tracker, and shopping inspiration. In addition, they have special deals on the homepage all the time.
PROS
- The search bar is big enough, located at the top of the store, making it easy for shoppers to find what they want.
- Proper inventory management is one of the most significant advantages of the Yahoo shop. Even if you are a newbie, starting a small business and the sales on this website are extremely simple.
- Yahoo offers a variety of discounts and discount codes to assist increase sales. You may easily incorporate such discount and coupon offers into your product price to entice shoppers to act quickly.
- Yahoo will calculate all shipping rates for you. This is really useful since it provides you a better idea of how much each of your sales will cost.
- This shopping search engine has a variety of payment gateway alternatives. This allows your business to interact with a variety of payment gateways. As a result, your buyers will have greater purchasing flexibility from you.
CONS
- As the traffic is lower than it used to be, your customer pool will be smaller. Still, it might be enough for some businesses.
- As a result of our comprehensive research, we found that merchants are primarily happy with Yahoo Shopping. Let us know in the comments below if you have any cons to add!
PRICE
To get your items shown on Yahoo, just purchase Bing Shopping clicks. For the price of one, you'll have access to two comparison engines. You pay a cost-per-click fee for each visitor. It starts from 0.5½ to 1$ depending on how your products are categorized.
6. Shopmania
Customers may quickly and conveniently compare prices with Shopmania.
It has a section for great deals where you can find products at reasonable prices. Shopmania also has a recommended for you section where you will see top offers according to your interest.
There are certain things that you should have if you want to promote your items on Shopmania. For example,
- Your business must be a fully functional e-commerce store.
- It should legally be registered and operating.
- You should include contact details that visitors can easily see.
- You should also use the official language and currency of the country where you work and the Shopmania country you have chosen.
Once you are done with all the necessary requirements, you'll be ready to promote your items on Shopmania.
PROS
- Whatever sort of things you offer, you'll most likely be able to find a category for them on Shopmania.
- The site's design is excellent. The large, vibrantly colored categories flow naturally into the results page. Similarly, the results are straightforward to explore, and the basic style encourages visitors to browse product sites.
- You have total control over your campaign as a ShopMania merchant at all times.
- Shopmania offers you the tools you need to efficiently manage your campaigns.
- The reporting system allows you to see your performance history, allowing you to make informed decisions.
CONS
- Lack of significant discounts in online shops and products.
PRICE
ShopMania, like most other shopping search engines on this list, is a pay-per-click platform. When you sign up for Shopmania, you will also be able to sell on Facebook for free.
7. Wanelo
Wanelo is a shopping search engine where customers may explore and purchase things. Over 12 million goods have been placed by individuals from over 300,000 retailers, including huge names as well as small merchants.
If you install the Wanelo Sales Channel on your Shopify store, all your products will be imported to Wanelo. You can then remove the products you don't want on Wanelo using Shopify's interface.
Suppose you want to start using Wanelo for your e-commerce. In that case, firstly
- You need to make your store unique and match your Wanelo username to your company name
- Complete the description
- Include a link to your website
- Submit your logo
Each of these elements is critical in differentiating your profile as a reflection of your actual shop.
Then make sure that you claim and then validate your store. This will enable you to manage your store's Wanelo profile and post items.
Then all you have to do is post. Distribute your items. You may organize them by style, season, or color by categorizing them into collections in any way you like.
PROS
- You may start generating "Stories" once you've listed several decent goods. A Wanelo Story is a terrific method to create a voice for your company by showcasing up to 9 particular goods packed together. These may also be shared on social media channels.
- You can also follow other Wanelo users and shops that interest you. Engaging with others will help you obtain additional followers and attention for your shop.
- To make your items more searchable, use #hashtags while commenting on them. Just don't go overboard because Wanelo will punish hashtag spammers.
- After 5 p.m. is prime activity time on Wanelo, so the more you do during those hours, the more shoppers will notice it.
- Sharing for promotion: Each page has sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social media platforms. People may use these share buttons to spread the word about their products and pages.
CONS
- Many customer reviews state that it is hard to understand how to be eligible for selling on Wanelo. Even if you follow all the necessary steps one by one, you might be disappointed to find out you are not eligible.
- It might be hard to get assistance from Wanelo.
- Trustpilot reviews of Wanelo show that the shopping search engine could be improved in many ways. You can see that the average score is 1.4. Though the reviews are written by shoppers, you may consider paying attention since an unsatisfactory shopping experience may cause losing customers for businesses.
PRICE
The Wanelo Sales Channel is free, but once a merchant is authorized to sell on Wanelo, a 17.1% fee is charged on all completed orders. The commission is automatically deducted from the order subtotal. This covers both the item's cost and delivery.
Wanelo substitutes the Shopify processing charge with a 2.9 percent processing fee on the total order cost in addition to the 17.1 percent commission. You do not pay until you make a sale.
8. PriceGrabber
PriceGrabber, launched in 1999, is a shopping search engine and distributed content commerce business.
It is owned by Connexity. So, when you list your items on this platform, you have access to Connexity's retail performance marketing network, which offers hands-on assistance with campaign setup and management.
Furthermore, there are no long-term commitments, so you may discontinue a product at any moment if it isn't producing income.
The good side of PriceGrabber is that there are no minimum bids. Plus, you have three binding source possibilities, such as
- Bid through feed import
- Bidding tool
- CPC rate card value
It also has a range of media alternatives to increase exposure: Banner placements, Featured Merchant, Featured Products, and Category Showcase are all options.
PROS
- It displays featured items and categories.
- Merchants can use the same feed file as in Google Product Listing Ads.
- Pricegrabber provides a variety of media alternatives, including Featured Merchant and Banner Placements.
- There is no such thing as a minimum CPC bidding model. Clients can bid for as little as $0.01.
- A bulk data feed upload via FTP is permitted for merchants.
CONS
- PriceGrabber's support system needs improving. It usually takes a long time to get responses to your problems and wishes.
- Trustpilot reviews of PriceGrabber are also showing that merchants are expecting more from this shopping search engine. Their average rating is 2.4 showing that the businesses that work with PriceGrabber are not very satisfied.
PRICE
In order to list your products on PriceGrabber, you need to pay a $50 deposit. You must pay a minimum of $0.10 to display your logo on your ad, in addition to a minimum ad spend of $700. On Wanelo, Ad Spend/Budget is used quickly since ads are presented to qualified traffic more quickly. There is no daily limit to restrict how much money you spend each day.
9. Pronto
Pronto is a shopping search engine that delivers price comparisons for the items that the customer prefers.
Pronto is known for being the first comparison shopping service to offer social shopping features on its site to help users make more informed buying decisions.
With millions of product listings organized into numerous retail verticals and millions of monthly visits, Pronto should be considered for any retailer's shopping search engine efforts.
PROS
- Permanent logo placement boosts brand trust.
- Pronto has a community feature that allows you to evaluate items, establish a profile, and share your expertise with others.
- You may also post product reviews and engage with others who have similar interests to you. Shopping online with knowledge from trusted peers helps you become a better, more educated buyer.
- It provides items with Featured Placement and Sponsored Listings to increase their visibility.
- To attract more consumers, you may use the Coupons & Offers capability.
CONS
- Pronto automatically classifies products into many categories.
- In the Merchant Center, you cannot regulate bids at the product level.
- There is no daily budget.
PRICE
Merchants are charged on an affiliate-style cost-per-acquisition basis rather than on a CPC basis, as is common with other shopping engines.
10. Nextag
Nextag ranks high among bargain seekers and has been servicing clients since 1999 by giving additional details on the product, service, and industry-related searches.
PROS
- The sophisticated interface allows retailers to create complicated shipping restrictions.
- Merchants may boost their trustworthiness by gathering customer feedback after a deal has been completed.
- ROI Optimizer makes tracking conversion rates and revenues easy.
- Nextag is a three-part traffic-generating scheme that retailers may benefit from. Merchant Logo, Display Rank, and Marketing Message are the three options.
- Nextag listing requirements are less stringent than those of most other shopping engines. This is critical for people who sell products containing adult material or other normally banned items.
- Merchants may bid on a brand, product, or category level with a suitable CPC bidding mechanism.
- Nextag allows for bulk goods imports.
- Setting maximum CPC bids on the top products business owners can help business owners get the highest rankings.
CONS
- Nextag consumes monthly budgets more quickly.
- A bid ranking program is used to showcase products. Higher bids, in other words, imply more significant positioning.
- A promotional marketing message does not come cheap; depending on the industry, it costs between $0.05 and $0.10.
- Qualified traffic views the items in a timely way, rather than over a period of days or months.
PRICE
Although Nextag outperforms the bulk of Shopping Engines with a 20.66 percent COS, the engine converts at nearly 3%. In addition to category and product-level bidding, Nextag's CPC bidding model allows merchants to bid at the brand level.
Before You Leave…
The e-commerce industry is bigger than ever now. That's why customers have more alternatives than they can possibly go over one by one. Luckily, shopping search engines are here to make the buyers' jobs easier.
They help customers compare items to discover the greatest bargains and save consumers a significant amount of time. That is why there has recently been a substantial increase in the usage of shopping search engines.
In order to increase your conversions, whether you use shopping search engines, advertisements, or popups, always note that there is no such thing as "the best" that applies to every business. You should consider which ways perform the best with the things you sell.
Even if the shopping search engine you selected doesn't create huge amounts of conversions, don't feel discouraged. You can always try different shopping search engines, social proof tools, or creating free popups in 5 minutes anytime!
It's your turn now. Have you ever utilized a shopping search engine to help you purchase online? How did it go?
Meet me in the comments section below!
Frequently Asked Questions
How Do Shopping Search Engines Work?
On the consumer side, shopping search engines function similarly to search engines, with the exception that shopping search engines will display goods side by side and how they compare in terms of pricing.
On the business side, each shopping search engine is unique. You basically pay a charge, submit the necessary material (product photographs, URL, price, description, etc.), and list your stuff. Your items will then appear in relevant searches alongside comparable products that are rated by price.
How Can I Get My Website Listed on Shopping Search Engines?
You may be required to provide a shopping search engine-compatible product feed with all of the information the platform wants in order for them to correctly list your goods. Some e-commerce systems have programs that produce product feeds automatically based on the online shop.
But don't just accept anything the app suggests. If you want to increase sales from your online business, you still need to optimize your product names, descriptions, and keywords.
How Much Does it Cost to Get Listed?
While some shopping search engines provide free listings, the cost varies according to the platform.
Some platforms require you to implement a pay-per-click system in which you must operate within a specific budget. Furthermore, you will be charged based on clicks rather than outcomes or conversions. Depending on your specialty and product pricing, this can be profitable or not.
There is also a cost-per-action system in place, in which you only pay a shopping search engine depending on the results.
Other CSEs need payment after the sale. They just take a share of the sale if it is made through their traffic.
