Ask Jeeves and Google have dived into the Shopping Search Engine front, joining Yahoo, MSN, and other Shopping Search sites like Shopping.com, BizRate, and MySimon.
It only makes sense that catering to those who shop online will bring more revenue to these search monsters. This BizJournals article explores the jump to Shopping Search:
On Nov. 4, Emeryville-based Web search firm Jeeves unveiled its latest thrust into the product-search realm a year after partnering with online price comparison business Pricegrabber.com.
Jeeves’ product search service arrives in time for the Christmas holiday shopping season and a little over a month after Sunnyvale-based Yahoo Inc. unveiled its own product search service, designed to help consumers comparison shop online.
Meanwhile, Google Inc., the Mountain View-based search engine leader, has been tinkering for almost a year with its product search Froogle.com (rhymes with frugal). Since its beta release in December 2002, Google has tweaked Froogle to allow users to order their search results by price, to view images of products, to see details about products and to get information faster through simplified navigation.
Search sites are investing in their product search offerings to boost revenue. Advertisers already pay for placement on search sites, which receive revenue when visitors click on those ads. The more those ads can be directed at people who are in the mood to buy, the happier advertisers will be and the wealthier search sites will become.
