Shopzilla Rampages Shopping.com
Yahoo and Google aren’t the only search engines looking for bragging rights over size. Shopzilla recently published its second quarter earnings and highlighted strong growth which put Shopzilla ahead of Shopping.com in revenue earned. Brain Smith of Comparison Engines sat down with Farhad Mohit, Chairman of Shopzilla (formerly BizRate), to discuss their recent growth after being acquired by E.W.Scripps.
“Shopzilla’s second quarter 2005 EBITDA of $7.6MM on revenue of $29.5MM highlights the strong growth of shopping comparison engines and puts the company ahead of Shopping.com in terms of quarterly revenue. Shopping.com reported second quarter 2005 revenue of $27.8MM, $1.7MM less than Shopzilla.” Here’s a snippet from the review of Brian’s sitdown with Farhad.
“Farhad explained his company’s take on the evolution of comparison shopping. “Most people started out at an access point like AOL. They then migrated to portals such as Yahoo!, Excite, and Lycos. More recently, internet users went to general search sites like Google and shopping destination sites like Amazon. It is only now after 7+ years online that internet users are really using comparison shopping sites.” Farhad continued “We save you time and then we save you money; we are not just a price comparison site. If you go to an individual merchant, you have to see if the company has the product in stock, if the price is good, and if the merchant is reliable. And you have to do this for each merchant you visit. In just one pass at Shopzilla, you get all the information you need. You don’t have to back out and do the search again.”
