As a marketer who started using Goto.com back in 1998 and religiously used the search query volume data at inventory.yahoo.com back in the day, the lack of transparency on the shopping engines has never sat well with me.

While I think we’re still a couple years off before the shopping engines release truly actionable Google Adwords-esque data (search volume, traffic estimator, referring keyword info, etc.) it’s nice to see NexTag taking a very small step in this direction.

While NexTag has long published historical pricing information, the company is now sharing data on Number of Sellers for a particular product and Number of Leads per Month. Just click on the Price History tab or Price History chart to access this information.

Here’s information for the Microsoft Zune 30GB Digital Media Player:

Hopefully this is just the start. The more data the shopping engines share with merchants, the smarter the merchants will become and the more money they will spend…unless, of course, the whole industry is built on a deck of cards.

The shopping engines have a treasure trove of information that they could share. And this data will not only help merchants, but sellers consumers as well. John Middleton pointed out months ago that NexTag displayed a ‘purchase rate’ level. Here’s the screenshot. NexTag has since removed this feature, but it’s an interesting data point that could help drive sales to high quality merchants.

I believe that part of the success of Google Adwords has to do with the openness of the system. It’s hard to comprehend that the shopping engines don’t have even rudimentary APIs. If they want to get started, they should just take a look at Google’s documentation.

I’ve said it many times - this is what sophisticated merchants are used to, so they’ll expect this of the shopping engines as well. If merchants don’t get it, they will always think of the shopping engines as a marketing afterthought.

NexTag is testing out a new homepage…

Obvious differences are as follows:
-Emphasis on the ability to save products (shopping list, wish list)
-Tag cloud of popular searches
-Product spotlight section featuring top products in 10 categories including Luggage, MP3 & Media Players, Notebook Computers, and Watches. These spotlights include links to Top Brands and Rebates.
-Compare Hotel Rates is now ‘Travel Rates’ and gets featured placement, now above Mortgage Loans (hmmm…do you think the market has shifted a bit?)
-’Home Prices’ section gets a little love

New look:

Old look:

A lot of people missed the emails sent by the shopping engines about seasonal rate increases, so here’s a quick summary:

Become.com - no rate increase
Yahoo! Shopping - no rate increase
Google Product Search - free
TheFind - free
Pronto - not holiday related, but there will be some adjustments, both up and down (Nov. 15)
Smarter.com - 20% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 - Dec. 31)
Shopzilla - 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 12 - Dec. 31)
PriceGrabber - 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 - Jan. 15)
NexTag - 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 - Jan. 2)
Shopping.com - 10-25% rate increase depending on category (Nov. 15 - Dec. 31)

It’s that time of year again. Many of the shopping engines have raised their cost per click (CPC) rates for the holidays. The shopping engines do this to counter increased rates on Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing and justify the move by saying that conversion rates increase during the holidays. In effect, the shopping engines are saying that merchants still made out like bandits and they have to cover their collective asses.

Shopzilla will increase its CPC rates by 25%. The change takes effect on November 12 and goes through December 31, 2007. Ok, at least Shopzilla moved the increase out to the 12th as opposed to starting November 1.

PriceGrabber increased its CPC rates by 25%. The change took effect on November 1 and goes through January 15, 2008. Ahhh…January 15? Excuse me?

NexTag increased its CPC rates by 25%. The change took effect on November 1 and goes through January 2, 2008. A 25% increase never feels good, but this is the one increase I don’t think merchants are worried about. NexTag continues to drive incredibly qualified traffic.

And then there’s Shopping.com. Not only did they they move the rate increase out to November 15 (as opposed to November 1), but they aren’t doing a blanket increase of 25% across all categories. Incredible. Someone listened!

In some random course in college, I had a professor give a class about generalizations…how dangerous and wrong they often were.

NexTag, Shopzilla, and PriceGrabber are saying that conversion rates increase during the holiday shopping season. But I’m not so sure that this Forklift seller is going to see a huge spike in conversion. Or that people will be adding projection mounts to their holiday wish lists.

NexTag, Shopzilla, and PriceGrabber are saying that CPC rates increase for them during the holiday shopping season. Again, I don’t think that argument holds for across all product categories. Do bids for textbooks on Adwords or YSM really increase 25%?

In other words, while Shopping.com didn’t get it perfect this time around, they get an A for effort, moving forward with a variable rate increase of 10-25% as opposed to a flat increase of 25%. Office equipment rates will only increase 10%. Media (books, movies, videos) rates will only increase 10%. Here’s the complete rundown:

Categories % Increase
Cars 10%
Clothing and Accessories 10%
Computers 10%
Electronics 20%
Event Tickets 10%
Flowers and Gifts 25%
Health and Beauty 15%
Home and Garden 20%
Jewelry and Watches 20%
Kids and Family 25%
Magazine and Subscriptions 10%
Media 10%
Miscellaneous 10%
Musical Instruments & Accessories 25%
Office 10%
Sports and Outdoors 25%
Video Games 25%

As for how SDC decided on the % increases, Alisa and Tomer explained to me: “We’ve done some analysis looking at previous years, looking at deltas in different categories in rate cards from our search partners. As opposed to one size fits all, we’ve done the analysis to figure out what’s needed to cover our costs. And we’ve moved the [rate increase] from November 1 to November 15 to better reflect when that increase kicks in. What we’re trying to do this year is be more sensitive to reflect what we’ve seen in the past. In some categories the keywords [cpc rates] increase more, in some categories the keywords [cpc rates] increase less.”

Sounds so simple. Makes perfect sense. Shopping.com is saying that the rates from their search partners (Google Adwords, YSM, etc.) don’t increase for all categories at a flat rate and therefore they aren’t going to pass along a flat rate increase to their merchants. Because…well…that would be wrong.

Shopping.com is good at buying keywords. The other shopping engines are also good at buying keywords. Some, like NexTag, might even be more efficient. Well, if that’s the case, why are we seeing a flat rate increase on NexTag, PriceGrabber, and Shopzilla?

Shopping.com has admitted that costs don’t increase 25% across the board (based on past data). If that’s true, then the other shopping engines are basically saying ’screw you’ to the merchants.

Ok, there might be a little more to it. Shopping.com in general seems to have a lower conversion rates then the other shopping engines because of poor partner traffic, so maybe they’re making up for that with lower CPC rate increases.

But that still doesn’t excuse the other shopping engines’ actions. They should immediately reconsider their increases for a number of categories. It’s the right thing to do.

I don’t like to leave loose ends.

I reported back on May 29 that NexTag was being sold for $1B. Yes, I knew it was a done deal back then, but wanted the company to confirm…I don’t post rumors.

According the the WSJ (June 8), NexTag sold aprx. 66% of the company for aprx. $833M, giving NexTag a total valuation of aprx. $1.2B.

There are plenty of ex-Taggers out there kicking themselves for not staying an extra couple months and vesting their options (there are lots of ex-Taggers who left after about 7 months on the job). Interesting question now is whether the current employees were taken care of or if the founders and VCs were the only ones who profited from the deal. If it’s the later, expect a whole new wave of ex-Taggers.