Shopping Comparison - News and Blog

New research published by E-consultancy this week reveals that the comparison engines sector continues to flourish despite challenges presented by the economic downturn and the increased cost of buying search engine traffic.

Google has evolved its search results to include images, news, recent blog posts, videos and related links.

Let's build a quick to-do list to spruce up your site for Universal Search.

Vertical search is the new breed of Search Engines that more intelligently mine data, from searching for keywords in audio files to focusing on specific industry sectors.

The landscape of Search is changing and I recently noticed three vertical search applications, which may end up threatening Google’s position.

There is plenty of room for improving the user experience of some of the UK's top travel websites, according to a new usability study.

Webcredible's Flights Online study looked at the flight search and booking process on 20 travel agent and airline websites.

The highest scoring website was Opodo with 67%, while Monarch came off worst on 38%. On average, travel agent websites were more usable than the airlines' sites.

Shopping comparison site Twenga started up in the UK just six months ago and claims to already be attracting over 2m monthly unique users.

The site was launched in France in 2006 and has since expanded around Europe, with sites in Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland and other countries reaching a combined audience of over 9m users a month.

We caught up with Twenga CEO Bastion Duclaux to talk about its growth, as well as what makes his site different from the rest...

Online consumer reviews aggregator Reevoo has announced a second round of funding led by French VC firm Banexi, as well as launching its service across the Channel.

We talked to CEO Richard Anson about the deal:

Customer reviews specialist Reevoo is lobbying for increased regulation around online reviews, despite the fact that it is a near-impossible task.

Measuring the validity of all online reviews is difficult and I can’t work out who might want to police this...

Microsoft yesterday acquired Jellyfish, a shopping comparison site which offers cashback on purchases for users, and ranks retailers according to the amount they agree to lower their prices.

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, though Jellyfish raised $5m in funding last year from Kegonsa Capital Partners and Clyde Street Investments.

Yesterday’s papers were full of talk about plans by Tesco to grow its online empire and cause even larger headaches for online retailers in the UK.

Both the Observer and Mail on Sunday report that the supermarket giant is set to announce its long-anticipated move into the online clothing sector – one it has been planning since last year.

Tesco's new financial price comparison site was launched by the supermarket giant last week as it moves into a market dominated by confused.com and moneysupermarket.com.