PriceGrabber has powered Yahoo Shopping for awhile now, but Yahoo’s recommended searches are now updating as you type into the search bar (similar to how Google Instant works).

Until now, Yahoo hasn’t coupled their recommended searches with product listings. So now as you type you not only see recommended searches, you see 3 product listings to go along with each recommended search (if they’re available). It’s like Yahoo’s version of Google one-box that updates instantly.

Presumably, PriceGrabber bidding influences whether or not a merchant is displayed in the recommended search results.

Starting June 3 Yahoo! Shopping announced that their merchants can list both PriceGrabber and Yahoo! Shopping reviews on Yahoo! Shopping accounts.

This gives merchants the opportunity to strengthen their product listings with a combination of PriceGrabber surveys and Yahoo! Shopping surveys. Great job Yahoo!

“On June 3, the Yahoo! Store team will add a new field to the ratings page in Store Manager to enable syndication of your [PriceGrabber] transactional ratings to Yahoo! Shopping. This field will allow participating merchants to enter and submit their PriceGrabber Retailer ID in order to syndicate their store transactional ratings to Yahoo! Shopping via their PriceGrabber account.”

Your PriceGrabber Retailer ID can be found in three places:

• In your PriceGrabber merchant survey code
• In your PriceGrabber CTS code (sales tracker code)
• By asking your PriceGrabber account representative

To reiterate, starting June 3 the ratings page in the Yahoo Shopping Store Manager will have a field that allows the syndication of PriceGrabber and Yahoo Shopping store reviews. To syndicate enter your PriceGrabber Retailer ID and that should be it.

If you have trouble finding your PriceGrabber Retailer ID feel free to e-mail me at Andrew@cpcstrategy.com and I’ll be happy to help you find it.

There are two main factors that a merchant should be concerned about regarding the switch: traffic and conversion.

We initially theorized that merchants on Pricegrabber will see an increase in traffic (by way of Yahoo Shopping users), accompanied by a drop in conversion rates since historically we’ve seen that Yahoo Shopping traffic doesn’t convert nearly as well as some of the other major engines, such as Pricegrabber.

In practice though?

That’s what we sought to find out.

The Study

Our goal was to analyze some of our clients’ campaign data since the change took place (March 11th), and compared it to the same period prior to the change.

We also compared the same merchants to their campaigns on another major shopping engine, Nextag, in order to normalize the data and remove any seasonal bias of that particular merchant.

Traffic Change

Below is a chart of eight merchants from various industries detailing the % change from when the change was made (March 11 to March 30) compared to the 20 days prior (Feb 19 – March 10):

We can observe two things from this chart:

a) While some merchants saw relatively a flat increase/decrease in traffic on Nextag, some of those saw a very dramatic rise on Pricegrabber, which can be attributed in large part to being listed on Yahoo.

b) For merchants that experienced significant drops on both engines (due to seasonality) of their products, the drop on Pricegrabber was less significant than on Nextag, which again may be Yahoo Shopping consumers mitigating the drop off for Pricegrabber.

Conversion Change

The other important factor that a merchant should be concerned with as we mentioned above is conversion, or cost of sale % (cost/revenue).

The chart below represents a merchant’s change in COS, so if in the period prior to the change they had a 20% COS, then post-change they got 16%, they would be noted as having a change of -4%:

The results here are less conclusive than the ones above. There are both cases of the Nextag merchants seeing a greater decrease in COS %, as well as vice versa.

Overall though Nextag merchants saw a greater decrease in COS, and even seeing drops when the same Pricegrabber merchant saw an increase.

Conclusion

We should always be careful to make any gross conclusions from analyzing traffic/conversion data from the CSE’s, as there are many factors to consider that could influence the results.

Still, given the short amount of time since Yahoo Shopping results was taken over with Pricegrabber’s, we observed that merchants seeing drops in traffic on other mediums (Nextag) that the drop was less dramatic on PG, and those who saw an increase on Nextag saw an exaggerated increase on PG.

Conversion rates were less clear, as we saw both improvements and declines from Pricegrabber as compared to Nextag in the same time period.

We will continue to monitor traffic on Pricegrabber as well as conversions to see the impact that Yahoo traffic is having on Pricegrabber.

Today is the big day!

All Yahoo Shopping product results will now be powered by PriceGrabber. If you’re still in the dark about the partnership, you can get caught up by reading Yahoo’s official announcement.

If you did not register with PriceGrabber before Jan. 19, your products are not guaranteed to show up on Yahoo Shopping today. If you still haven’t registered on PriceGrabber, you can sign-up here.

If you have any questions about the transition, make sure to check out the Yahoo! help FAQ page.

It should be interesting to see what impact the partnership will have on traffic & conversion rates for our clients and we will continue to update the blog over the next few weeks to let you know what we’re seeing.

Here is the link to the PriceGrabber merchant registration page – https://partner.pricegrabber.com/.

The minimum initial deposit is $50 and Yahoo merchants can use their xml export to meet PriceGrabber’s technical requirements.

You CAN still sign up for PriceGrabber after today, but they will not guarantee that your products will be live on both PriceGrabber and Yahoo Shopping on March 11th.

We have important news that will affect your product listings on Yahoo! Shopping and that will require you to take action.

As of March 11, 2010, Yahoo! Shopping is partnering with PriceGrabber. This partnership will provide you with greater access to more potential customers and to enhanced reporting. It will give you the opportunity to list your products either on Yahoo! Shopping only or on both Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber.

Because of this change, your Yahoo! Product Submit account will no longer be available on March 11, 2010. After March 11, 2010, to list your products either on Yahoo! Shopping only or on Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber, you must sign up for a new merchant account with PriceGrabber. To ensure your products are live on Yahoo! Shopping on March 11, 2010, you must sign up for a PriceGrabber merchant account from January 11, 2010, through January 19, 2010. Signing up is fast and easy.

If you sign up before March 11, 2010, any applicable set up fees will be waived!

If you do nothing and do not sign up for a new merchant account, your products will only be listed on Yahoo! Shopping through March 11, 2010. After March 11, 2010, your products will no longer be listed.

PLEASE NOTE: If you already have a merchant account with PriceGrabber, you do not need to sign up for a new account. Your products will automatically be listed on both Pricegrabber and Yahoo! Shopping on March 11, 2010.

Your Key Dates to Remember:

January 11, 2010	January 19, 2010	March 11, 2010
Sign up for your new PriceGrabber merchant account with Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber or with just Yahoo! Shopping.	Last day to sign up for a PriceGrabber merchant account to ensure your products are listed on Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber when Yahoo! Product Submit is discontinued on March 11, 2010.	The Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber partnership takes effect. If you have not signed up for a new PriceGrabber merchant account, this is the last day your products will be listed on Yahoo! Shopping.

In short, Yahoo Product Submit is shutting down, and listings on Yahoo Shopping will be generated via Pricegrabber data feeds.

This is big news for both companies and should help both in different ways.

What’s held Pricegrabber back from in the CSE space is that the amount of traffic that they get is slightly lower than Nextag’s/Shopzilla’s generally, and with access to Yahoo customers nowthat should help bolster their traffic (though it’s tough to tell if the traffic will be as qualified).

Yahoo will also benefit by allowing their merchants to use Pricegrabber’s tools, which are much more thorough than Yahoo’s, which in turn will let them more effectively manage their campaigns.

Also, as a company that’s been struggling over the past few years and have been cutting corners wherever they can, this should further help reduce their overall operating costs.

We’ll keep a close eye on this over the next few months and see how this move affects both companies.

Amazon currently has an app out where consumers can shop for products on their iPhones, and it’s been reported that an eBay user purchased a Lamborghini as well as a boat on his iPhone as well.

Yahoo then has just announced that they’re introducing their own iPhone app for the Yahoo Shopping platform:

We are pleased to announce the launch of a Yahoo! Shopping iPhone app, which will be downloadable by iPhone users. Because mobile shopping is fairly new to most users, all clicks on your product listings delivered through the Yahoo! Shopping iPhone app will be free of charge until further notice.

We’re not sure how well this will work though, because unlike the marketplaces and eBay, the purchases will be made on the merchant’s webpage which may not be quite as well optimized for mobile browsing–while a customer will never have to leave eBay or Amazon when making a purchase.

Plus, consumers may be more leery making purchases via their mobile devices on a site they’ve never been to compared to more trusted names such as Amazon/eBay.

At least with the latter two, a user’s purchasing information is usually stored/linked to their login, while on a 3rd party site they would have to register for a new account or enter a credit card on their phone, which presents another barrier to purchase.

That may perhaps be why this traffic will be free, but as consumers begin to further adopt mobile technology it may eventually become just second nature.

Update: PriceGrabber follows Yahoo! Shopping’s lead by launching their own iPhone App today – http://www.pricegrabber.com/iphone_promo.php

While columns such as product URLs, product names, descriptions, etc. are generally universal among them all, there are many discrepancies among them that a merchant should know about in order to maximize their listings on the engines.

Below we provide details on practices that will help best promote your products specifically for each engine:

Listing Nextag Sales Price:

- Include MSRP or regular price in feed

Nextag Free Shipping:

- If everything has free shipping, select “Always Free for All Items” in the “Manage Shipping Rules” section
- Otherwise include shipping costs in feed

Nextag Promotional Message:

- For a single message, bid at least $0.05 on the “Message” under “Manage Bids by Category”, then click “Set Marketing Message” and choose from the available templates
- To select different marketing messages by product, include a “Marketing Message” column in the feed and be sure to bid at least $0.05 on the “Message” for all products under “Manage Bids by Category”

Listing Free Shipping:

- Set column “Shipping Rate” to 0 in feed

Shopping.com Promotional Message:

- Include message in “Stock Description” column in feed.
- Free
- 100 character limit

Shopzilla Free Shipping:

- If shipping is free for all products, select “Free shipping for all products” under shipping information.
- If not, set rules through feed, column: “Shipping Cost”

Shopzilla Sales Price:

- Include “Original Price” & “Sale Price” columns in feed
- Be sure to select Contact Us in your Shopzilla login and notify your account manager that you’re adding a column; your listings will temporarily come down while they re-process your feed.

Shopzilla Coupon:

- Go to “Manage Listings”
- “Special Offers”
- Select from the available options

PriceGrabber Free Shipping:


- Set it under the column “shipping costs” within the feed
- In the login under “Your Account” it can be modified in “Shipping and Tax Info” (not available for all accounts)

PriceGrabber Coupon:

- All the info can be included in the feed using their coupon spec sheet.

Google Products Search Tax and Shipping:

-Add a column called “tax” in the format–Country:State:Percent: y/n shipping

So for example if a merchant is based in the United States, California, charges 8% tax, and offers free shipping, that column would read– US:CA:8:y

More info can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=160162

Become Promotional Message:

- Include desired text in feed
- Bid on desired categories in “Bids” tab

Become Sales Price:

- Include the following columns: “MSRP” and “Price”

Smarter Promotional Message:

- Have the two columns: “Regular Price” and “Sale Price”
- Go to “Extras” tab
- Select “Submit Coupons” and fill in appropriate fields

Yahoo Shopping Sales Price:

- Have the two columns: “price” and “sale-price”

Yahoo Shopping Free Shipping:

- Fill in the appropriate SKU with “0” in the column “shipping-price”

Pronto Sales Price:

- Include the columns: “Retail Price” and “Price”

-Nii

Update 1/25/2011-  It’s amazing to go through and update this over a year after it was first created. So much has changed. Besides updates to data feed specifications, Yahoo Shopping is now dead, Smarter is converting to an invitation-only shopping engine, and Amazon Product Ads has secured it’s spot as one of the top 3 CSEs for the past two quarters.

Help us keep the files below current. Should your shopping engine specifications be listed, or have an update you’d like to share? Contact us.

-Andrew

Update 2/14/2011 with TheFind’s data feed specifications.

-Andrew

Google Base/Google Product Search
- Sample Data Feed for Google Base/Google Product Search
- Google Base/Google Product Search Data Feed Specifications Page

Shopzilla
- Sample Data Feed for Shopzilla
- Shopzilla Data feed Specifications Page

Pricegrabber
- Sample Data Feed for Pricegrabber
- Pricegrabber Data feed Specifications Page

Nextag
- Sample Data Feed for Nextag
- Nextag Data feed Specifications Page

Shopping.com
- Sample Data File for Shopping.com – Varies By Category, see Specification Page
- Shopping.com Data Feed Specifications Page

Bing Shopping
- Sample Data Feed for Bing Shopping (right click – save as)
- Bing Shopping Merchant Integration Guide

Become
- Sample Data Feed for Become.com
- Become Data feed Specifications Page

Smarter.com
- Sample Data Feed for Smarter
- Smarter Data feed Specifications Page

Pronto
- Sample Data Feed for Pronto
- Pronto Data Feed Specifications Page

Amazon Product Ads
- Sample Data Feed for Amazon Product Ads
- Amazon Product Ads Data Feed Specifications Page (Need to have an Amazon Product Ads account to View)

TheFind
-TheFind Data Feed Specifications Page
-Sample Data Feed for TheFind (right click, save link as)

Learn how to effectively manage comparison shopping campaigns from experts who came from within the industry. Click here to register to download our free, easy to read ebook, How Conventional Wisdom Ruins Merchant Comparison Shopping Campaigns.