Screenshot of the Shopzilla main page on May 3, 2007
Shopzilla is a price comparison service. 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.[1] 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 for $525 million[2] and was part of its interactive media division.
In June 2011, Scripps sold Shopzilla to strategic private equity Symphony Technology Group for $165M. [3]
Shopzilla operates websites serving consumers and retailers in the U.S., UK, French and German markets. Shopzilla is headquartered in West Los Angeles, CA.
Products and services
Comparison Shopping, Merchant Ratings and Reviews.
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 (PPC) which is also known as Cost Per Click (CPC).
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[4].
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.
References
- ^ comScore Media Metrix Ranks Top 50 U.S. Web Properties for September 2009. comScore.
- ^ International Herald Tribune article about Scripps buying Shopzilla
- ^ [1]
- ^ Seasonal PPC increases comparisonengines.com, Accessed April 9, 2008
External links
