An ominous “warning” from Google to other Comparison Shopping Engines.

Q: From a retailer’s perspective, what are the key differences between Google Product Shopping and other CSE’s out there? How should I allocate my CSE budget?
A: The main difference between Google Product Search and other comparison shopping engines is that Google gets the most traffic and spends the most money on their engine.  If your budget allows you to be on only one engine, it should be Google Shopping. However, it’s better to be on a variety of other engines because they can all be profitable with the right datafeed management.  If you are able and budgeted to expand and are willing to spend the time to manage them all, you should enlist on other CSE’s, notably the Big Four: Nextag, Shopzilla, Shopping, and Pricegrabber. Luckily, you can refer to lucrative channels on our quarterly rankings of big CSE’s.

The high level of traffic is the product of providing a service for free.  Spending the most money on the CSE is a very interesting tidbit from Google. I am aware that they have acquired Like.com, moved all the technology from boutiques.com to Google Product Search. Then they also acquired Sparkbuy which was a very good recommendation engine and British financial comparison service BeatThatQuote.

So Google Product Search at the moment = Like.com + Sparkbuy + BeatThatQuote + Google technology

I can most probably also add the ITA acquisition as well as that has to do with flight comparison technology. It is pretty clear to me that the changes in progress to Google Product Search will have a large set of implications for  Google.

I am of the belief that online retailers should list with all comparison shopping engines and then determine for themselves which CSE converts the best. Trying to list with just one comparison engine (if it is not the most dominant one in a particular region) is a bad idea. Your conversions should make the decisions not the talk from the account or product manager from a particular Comparison Shopping Engine.

Disclaimer: I have issues with how Google operate.