Archives for year 2008

Dec 31, 2008 Google Product Search gaining market shares in the US
Read on SearchEngineLand: Google’s Product Search Catching Up Fast With Shopping Rivals from Investor Business Daily reports on a comScore release that Google’s Product Search is gaining in the category of shopping search. In fact, Google Product Search is up 786% from the year-ago November. [...] Back to the shopping search category, where Yahoo still leads the category [...]
Dec 23, 2008 Getting product reviews when shopping in-store
Read on EurekAlert, a research portal: Scientists at Toshiba’s Corporate Research and Development Center, in Japan have developed a system that offers shoppers advice on what to buy based on the product barcode and the current weblog buzz around the gadget. [...] Takahiron Kawamura and colleagues have developed WOM (word-of-mouth) Scouter to allow shoppers to get [...]
Dec 17, 2008 The draft specification of the hProduct microformat has been published
After a few months of work, Jay Myers from BestBuy and Paul Lee from Google Product Search have published the first draft specification of the hProduct microformat. As explained in the introduction of this specification: The web is a thriving consumer marketplace with a plethora of manufacturers and vendors scattered across the globe. Sifting through massive [...]
Dec 15, 2008 Twenga to launch its iPhone version
Accessoweb has the first screenshots of the upcoming iPhone version of Twenga: From the screenshots and the video on the Accessoweb article, this new iPhone app brings a product search; technical details, best prices and reviews for each product; and “add to my selection” option. So far, it doesn’t seem to use advanced iPhone features like [...]
Dec 14, 2008 Google testing SearchMonkey-like feature
Read on SearchEngineLand: Google is testing a number of changes to its search results [...] The most dramatic of the changes involving reviews of products and services that appear on Yelp, Citysearch, CNET, TripAdvisor and Download.com. The system, which Google has yet to give an official name, allows these publishers to flag data on their web pages [...]
Dec 07, 2008 Leaving Yahoo!…
So the news came out when I was on holidays: Yahoo! has decided to sell Kelkoo to a UK Private Equity firm named Jamplant. Apparently, there was no official announcement by Yahoo!, and the first blog to relay this news was Pierre Chappaz’s, with the publication of an internal memo announcing the decision and his personal [...]
Nov 10, 2008 On holidays for 3 weeks…
… in New Zealand. I have really great expectations regarding this destination ;) And I think I have never prepared and planned any holidays so much. Maybe because we have hired a car to go from Auckland (north island) to Queenstown (south island); having a car, and not relying on public transportation, means it’s easier to [...]
Nov 08, 2008 Revamped local results on TheFind
TheFind.com has revamped its local shopping result page: simplified user interface, bigger map, better interaction with the map (store name directly mentioned, direct access to products from any local store, “get driving directions” link)… This is a subtile redesign: no new flashy feature, but interesting to see how details are sorted out. Overall, it provides [...]
Oct 28, 2008 Economic crisis: is it good for CSEs?
Well, yes, according to two recent articles (discussing the European market): On e-Consultancy: Online retailers are increasingly benefiting from marketing their products on shopping comparison sites as cash-strapped consumers seek bargains online, according to research published today by E-consultancy and DoubleClick. Some 43% of retailers surveyed by online research publisher E-consultancy say that the proportion of online sales [...]
Oct 23, 2008 Product results within Google Adwords
On SearchEngineLand: A search for bluenile in Google will now return a search ad for Blue Nile. The search ad is not an ordinary Google search ad, instead, it shows a link that reads, “Show products from Blue Nile for bluenile.” If you click on that link, it opens up three product results from Blue Nile. [...] The ad [...]
Oct 23, 2008 Compare the candidates for the ‘08 US election…
From this side of the Atlantic, it’s funny seeing some shopping destinations opening special pages on their sites to cover the ‘08 US elections. Two examples: PriceGrabber PriceGrabber has a special tab in its main navigation entitled “Election’08“, which leads to a mini-site dedicated to the election: Welcome to PriceGrabber.com’s Candidate Comparison website. We’ve researched tons of information [...]
Oct 22, 2008 New MonsieurPrix.com / ShopGenie.co.uk websites
MonsieurPrix.com and its english counterpart ShopGenie.co.uk have been relaunched today with a new design. Acquired by Kelkoo in 2003, those two shopping destinations are now completely powered by the Kelkoo Syndication APIs, which are available to all Kelkoo partners.
Oct 20, 2008 BestBuy experiments hProduct on its main site
Following the Giftag announcement in September, BestBuy is now starting implementing the hProduct microformat on its main site. Via the blog of Jay Myers, lead developer at BestBuy: [...] In an experimental move, we are adding hProduct to all search result, listing pages (faceted navigation), and “shop URLs” (http://www.bestbuy.com/shop/term) on the site with a pre-holiday code [...]
Oct 06, 2008 New logo and color scheme for TheFind.com
TheFind sports a new logo and color scheme – forget the orange and the red; the blue and the marroon now rule! The “Shopping Search Reinvented” tagline has also disappeared. To be honest, I’m not really convinced with the new colors: they give a “too serious” look to the site, when I found the orange and [...]
Oct 03, 2008 Eco-friendly hotel search with WholeTravel
On TechCrunch (emphasis is mine): The “green” incarnation of travel, called ecotourism, mandates that travelers minimize their cultural, economic, and environmental impacts as much as possible to promote sustainability. But while there are thousands of hotels worldwide that promote themselves as “green”, many of them are only partially fulfilling these requirements – they might not be wasting [...]
Oct 01, 2008 The eBay Browser Highlighter, pragmatic solution to a more complex problem
Read on TechCrunch: eBay launched a new browser extension tool tonight that lets you highlight different products in Firefox or Internet Explorer and compare the pricing of those products on eBay. The tool also includes Skype functionality, which will let you click on a number in your browser and call it directly via Skype. [...] Because it’s [...]
Sep 22, 2008 Innovative product selection on YouTellMe
YouTellMe is a new social shopping / price comparison site currently launched in beta in Netherlands. As described by the team behind it: [...] we started YouTellMe out of frustration with the existing product and price comparison websites. Our goals was to build a web application where everyone can easily compare products and determine their personal [...]
Sep 19, 2008 hProduct revival
After months (should I say years?) of inactivity, there have been several signs of interest for the hProduct microformat proposal in the past 3 months. Posted by Hayes Davis on the Appozite blog in June’08: hProduct has the noble goal of describing a product itself outside the context of a classified-style listing of that product for sale (hListing) [...]
Sep 18, 2008 GoodGuide provides health, environmental and social facts about products
GoodGuide is a new US start-up demo’ed at the TechCrunch50 event last week. In its own words: GoodGuide provides the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home. [...] Our goal is to provide the most comprehensive, credible, and useful information in the [...]
Sep 14, 2008 From Twitter
from registration to customization, twitter is damned simple..
Sep 14, 2008 From Twitter
trying twitter
Sep 11, 2008 Book review: “Subject to change”
I’ve just finished reading “Subject to change – creating great products and services for an uncertain world“, a book written by people at the design company Adaptive Path. Despite the facts the book can be considered as 160-pages long advertisement for Adaptive Path, the book is pretty inspiring for designers looking to produce WOW products. [...]
Sep 08, 2008 The rise of the awesome search bars
The recent months have seen the emergence of new concepts / prototypes / products related to search bars, either on web sites or directly embedded into browsers. The following examples, with various degrees of maturity, shows that innovation in this area will mean simpler access to data and services in the near future. Firefox 3 & [...]
Sep 04, 2008 How Efficient is Google for Product Search?
Read on the StyleFeeder tech blog: We’ve recently been working to improve the experience of users who are discovering StyleFeeder through search engines, and were intrigued to find that 55% of shoppers are not finding what they are looking for using Google and the like. When natural search users land on one of our item detail [...]
Aug 29, 2008 Microsoft acquires Ciao!
Microsoft announces today the acquisition of Greenfield Online, owner of Ciao!: Microsoft Corp today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Greenfield Online Inc, owner of Ciao GmbH, one of Europe’s leading price comparison, shopping and consumer reviews sites, in a move that will further extend Microsoft’s search and e-commerce services in Europe. [...] [...]
Aug 27, 2008 New DealTime.com
DealTime is testing a whole new site on the US market. I saw it yesterday, but get the old design today. So DealTime seems to do some bucket testing to test the new design. Overall, it’s a great improvement over the slightly old current design. New color scheme, revised usability… the new site is a pleasure [...]
Aug 19, 2008 New product display for Kelkoo
By writing my last post about the new design of PriceGrabber’s search result pages, I realized that I haven’t detailed the new product display we launched on Kelkoo in July. So let’s do it :) The previous product display was introduced in October’07 along with the full redesign of the Kelkoo site (See an example below [...]
Aug 12, 2008 New search result pages on PriceGrabber
PriceGrabber has recently updated its search result pages, and introduced a new display for products and offers. This new redesign is a nice revamping of the previous SRPs, and perfectly matches the style introduced with the new PriceGrabber homepage in late ‘07. In the details: The new style sports gradients / shadows / rounded corners… but [...]
Aug 09, 2008 The day I stopped using Outlook…
In Breaking Free of Outlook, Bernard Lunn explained how he recently switched from Outlook / Exchange to Google GMail… His article inspired me and I decided to switch to GMail for my personal mail. Why switching? I only have POP access to my current mail server and a personal computer running Outlook. However, on daily basis, [...]
Jul 30, 2008 Google more and more relevant as CSE
Not really a breaking news, but Google is becoming more and more relevant as CSE. In a post entitled “Google Product Surge“, Kevin Packler explains: Recently there has been a strong rise in the effectiveness of Google Product Search (GPS) as a source of traffic and sales. [...] My information is based on client data, where [...]
Jul 25, 2008 Preview of upcoming iPhone App from TheFind
Siva Kumar, CEO of TheFind, has been kind enough to share with me a preview of “TheFind: Where to Shop“, a new iPhone application “designed to give consumers the ability to leverage TheFind’s powerful shopping search capabilities and comprehensive local store data from anywhere, via the Apple iPhone“. From the screenshots below, this application is really [...]
Jul 17, 2008 Patent sillyness…
Reported by TechCrunch today: Channel Intelligence, a company based in Florida, filed a lawsuit for patent infringement in Delaware on Tuesday against a long list of startups and other companies and individuals who have one thing in common – they offer wish lists for products people may want others to buy for them. [...] The patent [...]
Jul 16, 2008 Rich Media and CSEs…
More and more retailers are experimenting with rich media on their websites; for those who like rich media, video, RIAs… and who speak french, there is RichCommerce.fr, a blog dedicated on rich interfaces applied to the commerce world. But so far, CSEs were rarely mentioned when talking about rich media / RIAs. Today, ChannelAdvisor announces the [...]
Jul 15, 2008 Summize acquired by Twitter
It has been rumored in the last week, but today it is official: Summize and its Twitter search platform has been acquired by Twitter, the micro-blogging platform… But who remembers that Summize has its roots as review aggregator? The whole story of Summize is explained by Jay Virdy, Summize CEO, in the final post on [...]
Jul 11, 2008 Testing Google Trends for Websites on shopping engines
Since one month, Google Trends now shows traffic trends for websites, and therefore becomes a competitor of Alexa or Compete. Google is a bit secret about the way data are collected: Trends for Websites combines information from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel [...]
Jul 08, 2008 The integration of NearbyNow local inventories into TheFind is now live
Announced 2 months ago, the integration of NearbyNow local inventories into TheFind is now live. When doing a mouse-over on some products, you now get a “Check local inventories” button next to product details. This button leads you to a page co-branded with NearbyNow, where you can choose the local shop you are interested in, give [...]
Jul 05, 2008 Search: how to clarify user’s intent? Kosmix comes with an impressive solution
At Kelkoo, we observed that, out of the top 100 most frequent queries per month, about 60 to 70 of those queries are brand names. Yes, people searching for “samsung” or “apple” and expecting to get relevant results for their query. But what are the users’ intent when searching for a brand name? In May [...]
Jul 05, 2008 Site up!
My site (nicolasleroy.fr) has been offline since last Friday, and has finally reborn this night :) What happened? Basically, I forgot to renew my domain name, and then came up with an imbroglio between my registrar and the company that hosts my website. I hadn’t received any mail from my registrar saying my domain name was [...]
Jun 23, 2008 Windows Live Search Cashback to be launched in UK
According to NMA.co.uk, Windows Live Search Cashback – the cashback solution from Microsoft, powered by the Jellyfish technology – will soon be launched in the UK: Microsoft is set to roll out its cashback scheme in the UK after its successful launch in North America last month. The company said the UK would be the next [...]
Jun 18, 2008 Kelkoo Mobile available in all countries
In November 2007, Kelkoo Mobile was launched in France , followed by Norway and Sweden in March 08. Today, Kelkoo Mobile is officially available in all Kelkoo countries: UK: http://m.kelkoo.co.uk IT: http://m.kelkoo.it FR: http://m.kelkoo.fr DE: http://m.kelkoo.de ES: http://m.kelkoo.es NL: http://m.kelkoo.nl DK: http://m.kelkoo.dk NO: http://m.kelkoo.no SE: http://m.kelkoo.se Through this service, mobile users – with a mobile phone that support XHTML (including of course the Apple iPhone) [...]
Jun 16, 2008 Shopzilla now displays filtering options at the top
Brian Smith has the scoop: Shopzilla now displays filtering options above the search results, when most of the CSEs still display them on a left column. However, Shopzilla is not the only CSE to display filters on the top. In Europe, Kelkoo and Twenga have implemented such display. When we launch the new Kelkoo redesign last [...]
Jun 11, 2008 Travel discovery with TravelMuse
TravelMuse is a new travel destination that “combines original editorial content and destination city guides with powerful planning tools“. Nothing really innovative so far, except its “Inspiration Finder“, an assistant to find some ideas of travel destinations based on your criteria: the airport you are flying from, the time of the year (even if it [...]
Jun 08, 2008 Next generation shopping search
Last Wednesday, AltSearchEngines published an article written by Bastien Duclaux, CEO of Twenga – a European-based shopping engine – and entitled “Shopping Search Engines, The Next Generation“. To be frank, I don’t find the whole article really inspired, but there are a few interesting ideas (Emphasis is mine) : Consumers are now starting to make a [...]
Jun 05, 2008 LeGuide.com to acquire Dooyoo
Read on Yahoo! Finance: LeGuide.com S.A. (Alternext – ALGUI), the leading independent publisher of Internet shopping guides in France and the fifth most popular in Europe*, announces the conclusion of an agreement for the future acquisition of the social shopping guide dooyoo as part of its strategic European development. The acquisition would not only strengthen the [...]
Jun 02, 2008 We need a Wikipedia for products
I borrowed the title of this post from a great article entitled “We need a Wikipedia for data” written by Bret Taylor (emphasis is mine): I have come to realize how hard it is for a everyday programmer to get access to even the most basic factual data. If you want to experiment with a new [...]
Jun 01, 2008 Site Updates (May 2008)
My trip to Aosta Valley was great despite the 4.5 rainy days out of 5… It had been difficult seeing the mountains surrounding the valley, and therefore it had not been a great hiking / photography experience. However, the visit of the typical villages, the spa of the hotel and the food were great ;) [...]
Jun 01, 2008 Italy - Five days in the Aosta Valley - [21 photos]
We spent a few days in the Aosta Valley, in Italy. Unfortunately, we got 4.5 days of rain out of 5. It had been difficult seeing the mountains surrounding the valley, and therefore it had [...]
May 31, 2008 Google testing a Finance price comparison service in the UK
SearchEngineLand had the scoop: Google is experimenting a new service called “Google Merchant Search“. From the Google FAQ: What is Google Merchant Search? Google Merchant Search is an easy new way for you to find products or services from providers who match your needs. What products or services are supported through Google Merchant Search? The service is [...]
May 25, 2008 On holidays for the week
I’m off for the week, going to the Aosta Valley in Italy… No internet connection, no cell phone… HOLIDAYS !!! :)
May 25, 2008 Yahoo! SearchMonkey is live (and some thoughts on search innovation)
Yahoo! SearchMonkey, the platform that allows publishers to enhance the display of their indexed pages on Yahoo! Search, is now live in the US and the UK. You can test it by searching on Yahoo! Search and browsing the gallery of existing applications. Only a few apps are installed by default (i.e: the YouTube app); [...]
May 21, 2008 Other Microsoft / Windows Live news…
Following the announcement of Windows Live Cashback, Microsoft has given some other news regarding its search and advertising strategies during its advance08 conference. News related to online shopping: Farecast – the travel search destination recently bought by Microsoft – is relaunched under the Windows Live moniker, as Windows Live Farecast. No changes in terms of features, [...]
May 21, 2008 Microsoft Live Search will use Jellyfish technology to offer cashbacks
This is the big news of the day: we now know why Microsoft has bought Jellyfish a few months ago. Not to improve MSN Shopping… but Windows Live Search. Indeed, Microsoft has announced Windows Live Search Cashback, a program to add cashback features on its web search (read the press release). As described in the [...]
May 20, 2008 NearbyNow brings local inventories to TheFind
Read on SearchEngineLand: There are a handful of companies that have been building local product inventory databases, many of them under the radar. They include Krillion, NearbyNow, Shopatron, Where2GetIt, Channel Intelligence and ShopLocal. Krillion was the first to start syndicating that data. But NearbyNow is now going to take its billion product database and make it [...]
Feb 04, 2008 Winter photographies of mountain ranges surrounding Grenoble - [35 photos]
A collection of photographies shot with my new Canon EOS 40D camera. All those photos have been shot near Grenoble and its surrounding mountain ranges (Belledonne, Chartreuse, Vercors)