Huge Year of Change for Comparison Shopping Engines in 09.

There's more changing in the world of Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs for short) this year than I can remember since back to the 99/00 timeframe.

The short-list:

• Amazon Product Ads are doing really well and have come out of nowhere to be a top CSE for many of our retailers.  We have more details over at sister-site Amazon Strategies.
• Biztrate (shopzilla's sister site) - has an entire new UI (details at siter-site CSE Strategies) that highlights coupons.
• Shopping.com has announced tons of new things - tiered pricing, a new feed specification and more. I bet coupons are coming (in the feed spec).
•  Microsoft/MSN/Live - MSFT has no fewer than 3-4 CSEs now and they seem to be combining them into one platform.
• PriceGrabber - Coupons and some AOL changes coming 
• AOL - Rolling out their own (used to be Pricegrabber partnership) CSE
• NextTag - lots of changes similar to above 
• Become.com - actually increasing rates (!?) 
• Smarter - feature store and logo opportunities  

  

We have a large team of business folks and engineers at ChannelAdvisor staying on top of these changes from a product perspective and they also have put the details into a white paper that you can download for free here.