Shopzilla - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Shopzilla is a price comparison service

Price comparison service

On the internet, a price comparison service allows individuals to see different lists of prices for specific products. Most price comparison services do not sell products themselves, but source prices from retailers from whom users can buy...

. Founded in June 1996 by Farhad Mohit and Henri Asseily as Binary Compass Enterprises, the company changed its name to BizRate.com in January 1999. The company launched the website Shopzilla in November 2004, which then became the company name too.

The company's mission is to enable shoppers to find, compare and buy anything, sold by virtually anyone, anywhere. In September 2009, Shopzilla sites attracted over 19 million unique visitors in the U.S. according to comScore

ComScore

comScore is a Internet marketing research company providing marketing data and services to many of the Internet's largest businesses. comScore tracks all internet data on its surveyed computers in order to study online behavior....

. Shopzilla also operates the BizRate.com consumer feedback network that collects millions of consumer reviews of stores and products each year.

In June 2005, Shopzilla was acquired by The E. W. Scripps Company

E. W. Scripps Company

The E. W. Scripps Company is an American media conglomerate founded by Edward W. Scripps on November 2, 1878. The company is headquartered inside the Scripps Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Its corporate motto is "Give light and the people will find their own way."On October 16, 2007, the company...

for $525 million and was part of its interactive media division.

In June 2011, Scripps sold Shopzilla to strategic private equity Symphony Technology Group for $165M.

Shopzilla operates websites serving consumers and retailers in the U.S., UK, French and German markets.
Shopzilla is headquartered in West Los Angeles, CA.

Revenue Streams

As for most comparison shopping services, the main revenue stream comes from selling leads to merchants, using the common model called Pay Per Click

Pay per click

Pay per click is an Internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the publisher when the ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market...

(PPC) which is also known as Cost Per Click (CPC

CPC

- Organizations :* Confirmation Preperation Class* California Preparatory College* Canadian Parachute Centre* Canadian Paralympic Committee* Center for Plant Conservation* Children's Psychiatric Center, Monmouth County, NJ USA* Climate Prediction Center...

).

Minimum CPC rates are set by Shopzilla primarily depending on the product categories, and secondarily based on time of the year. Over the past few years Shopzilla (as well as most of its competitors) has hiked up minimum CPC rates during the holidays shopping season.

On the Shopzilla merchant extranet, merchants can choose to raise (or lower down to the minimum) their CPC rates across the board, by category or by individual product. Shopzilla uses the CPC rate as one of many parameters to determine a merchant's ranking on a product result listing. Some of the other parameters include presence of a product picture, availability of the product and the merchant's Bizrate satisfaction ratings. As with Google and other search engines, Shopzilla regularly updates its sorting algorithm called ShopRank.
As such, a merchant can theoretically be more competitive in the Shopzilla rankings by doing any combination of increasing product information and stock, improving its satisfaction ratings or simply paying more per click.

Revenue Streams

External links

See also