Yahoo! Shopping powered by PriceGrabber?!?

Not too long ago, we found out that Yahoo! had struck a deal with Microsoft to use Bing to power their search results. This meant that Yahoo!, a long standing search company, had given up on developing their own search technology and would just rely on Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

With that being said, earlier this week Yahoo! had made another announcement about cutting back on the development of their own technology and will again outsource to another company. This time it is their comparison shopping engine division, Yahoo! Shopping and the company is PriceGrabber. PriceGrabber will now be powering Yahoo!‘s comparison shopping engine Yahoo! Shopping.

I have taken the liberty to list the announcement here for your reading convenience:

Yahoo! Shopping API Announcement

After careful consideration, we have decided to enter into a strategic partnership with PriceGrabber to power the Product Submit functionality of Yahoo! Shopping as of March 11, 2010. As a result of these changes, Yahoo! will no longer provide the Shopping Web Services API, including Shopping Results (the “Yahoo! Shopping Syndication Services”) to you as of March 11, 2010.

If you wish to continue to display syndicated shopping results for products listed on Yahoo! Shopping, you must apply to PriceGrabber for shopping syndication services. Although they do not offer a free web services API, you can find out more about how to apply to their program here: http://www.pricegrabber.com/about.php/about=corporate/sub_opt=10.

It has been our privilege to provide you with Yahoo!’s shopping syndication product, and we hope to continue our relationship with you in other areas long into the future.

The Yahoo! Shopping Team

Posted at January 11, 2010 8:09 AM

Taken directly from the Yahoo! Developer Network Blog.

What does this mean to you if you currently submit to Yahoo! Shopping and not PriceGrabber?
If you currently are submitting to Yahoo! Shopping and you wish to have your products appear on the shopping portal after March 11, 2010, you will need to sign up for PriceGrabber‘s comparison shopping engine.

You can do so here:
Home & Personal : https://partner.pricegrabber.com/mss_main.php?sec=3&ccode=us

Technology & Entertainment : http://www.pricegrabber.com/about.php?about=merchant&sub_opt=6

What does this mean to you if you currently submit to both Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber?
You will continue to appear on both comparison shopping engines, but you will no longer pay two separate companies. You will now only need to fund your PriceGrabber account. This is one less thing you will have to manage. One less point of failure.

What does this mean to you if you currently submit only to PriceGrabber?
You are now going to be visible on two comparison shopping engines while only doing the work for one. However being that you will now be listed on two separate shopping engines, you will see an increase in your clicks. This means you will be spending more money than you used to. Yahoo! Shopping pulls a lot of traffic. This is not something to be taken lightly. Make sure you monitor your clicks and spend once this goes into affect!!

These are your advertising dollars at work. Make sure your getting the most of out them. The more you know, the more you grow (financially). If you have questions about this merger or are looking for an experienced comparison shopping engine account manager to help you with this transition don’t be afraid to ask!

CSE.Manager@gmail.com