Good morning comparison shopping engine Gurus!
While doing some research on what the comparison shopping engine Bing Cashback is going to evolve into, I came across an interesting post on ComparisonEngines.com stating that the comparison shopping engine plans to go with a cost free advertising model engine (think Google Product Search). According to the blog’s author, he met with reps from Bing and confirmed this last week. The author also states that this change will happen after this July 30th end of the Cashback program. You can read the full post here:
http://comparisonengines.com/2010/06/08/confirmed-bing-shopping-will-be-free/
If this is information is correct, merchants will finally be given a strong second option to drive shoppers to their site for free through a comparison shopping engine. While there are other “free” comparison shopping engines out there, none seem to be able to rival the traffic and conversions that Bing Cashback was able to generate (excluding Google Product Search of course). If you are an advertiser on a minimal budget, I don’t have to tell you how great this change would be for you. The elimination of the “Cashback” side of the engine will also lift the barrier that was preventing advertisers with MAP pricing from submitting to the engine.
No information has been released directly from Bing to confirm the change. I will continue to monitor the evolution of this comparison shopping engine closely and keep you up to date!
