Pricesearcher was an independent e-commerce search engine launched in the UK in 2016 which is now focussing on top 10 lists and providing lists based on sales with no price comparison functionality.[1][2] It does not use the traditional Price Comparison Website (PCW) model adopted by comparison sites such as Moneysupermarket.com and search engines such as Google Shopping[3][4] where retailers pay to list their products for sale.[5] Since its inception, it has listed products from online retailers, without charging a listing fee or commission for sales. Product search results are consequently unaffected by a retailer's marketing budget or lack thereof. Shoppers are able to use the vertical search engine as a price-checking tool, to see whether the goods they find 'on sale' elsewhere are genuinely a good deal.
 | |
| Founded | 2011 |
|---|---|
| Owner | PRICESEARCHER TECHNOLOGY GROUP LTD |
| Founder(s) | "Samuel Dean Hussain McMurran". www.companieshouse.gov.uk. companies house. Retrieved 23 June 2016. |
| Industry | Internet |
| URL | pricesearcher.com |
| Launched | 2016 |
History
editPricesearcher began as a small, self-funded project by Samuel Dean[2] in 2011, with the aim of indexing all products available to buy online to give shoppers a clear picture.
Dean used Peopleperhour in the early days to find freelancers to work on the initial project. Then in 2014, he recruited Raja Akhtar, a PHP specialist, and the two worked together in their spare time. Akhtar is now Head of Web Development at Pricesearcher. In 2015, they recruited a freelance DevOps engineer, Vlassios Rizopoulos,[6] to help speed up the product indexing process. In 2017, Rizopoulos became Pricesearcher's Chief Technology Officer.[2]
Their goal was to list a searched-for item in one view, from retailers, marketplaces, classified advertising sites, brands and shopping comparison sites.[2] As the product index increased, funding was sought. In 2016, Pricesearcher was launched and received its first outside seed funding from private investors.
Retailers who joined the Pricesearcher search engine in their first year were Amazon,[3] Argos, IKEA, Mothercare, Currys, PC World, Dreams (bed retailer), Wilko, King of Shaves, JD Sports. Many more have joined since.[3]
In September 2018, Pricesearcher was selected to join the London Stock Exchange's capital-raising programme.[7]
In October 2018, former Amazon UK Head of Pricing Weldon W. Whitener joined Pricesearcher as Chief Analytics officer.[8]
In January 2019, Pricesearcher becomes a Google CSS Partner (Comparison Shopping Services)[9]
In March 2019, Pi Datametrics and Pricesearcher Launched a Joint product for digital retailers "The first ever combining of organic search data and online product price data in a single report, PricePoint allows retailers to highlight where the winning pricing opportunities exist online, alongside organic visibility."[10]
Pricesearcher enters a new partnership with latestdeals.co.uk where their technology is powering product search and product comparison for their consumers.[11] Latestdeals.co.uk is a uk website dedicated to the promotion of deals, vouchers, and freebies.
Pricesearcher Ltd went into administration on 12 March 2020 [12]
On 20 March, Founder Samuel Dean and Jack Sundt formed a new business, Pricesearcher Technology Group Ltd [13]
Technology
editPricesearcher uses PriceBot, its custom web crawler, to search the web for prices, and it allows direct product feeds from retailers at no cost.[3] The search engine's rapid growth[3] has been attributed to its enabling technology: a retailer can upload their product feed in any format, without the need for further development. Pricesearcher processes 1.5 billion prices every day and uses Amazon Web Services (AWS), to which it migrated in December 2016, to enable the high volume of data processing required.[14] The rest of the business uses algorithms, NLP, Machine learning, data science and artificial intelligence to organise all the data.
As of February 2018, Pricesearcher is processing 2,500 UK retailers through PriceBot. A further 4,000 retailers are using product feeds to submit product information to the search engine.[2]
Web crawler
editLike Google's web crawler, GoogleBot,[15] PriceBot identifies online retailers and crawls their websites looking for products that are being sold. Retailers can submit their own websites for crawling by PriceBot.[3]
Business model
editPricesearcher is free to use for both shoppers and retailers. It operates like Google and indeed.com as a free-to-list search engine. Future revenue will come from an Adwords-type advertising model; the most traditional advertising model for search engines[2]
Research
editData collected by Pricesearcher was presented at the Brighton SEO Conference in a presentation: "What we have learnt from indexing over half a billion products".[2] Using the first 500 million products, Pricesearcher found that the average length of a product title was 48 characters (including spaces). Product descriptions averaged 522 characters, or 90 words. 44.9% included shipping costs. 40.2% did not provide dimensions such as size and colour.[2] Their research shows that many retailers could improve their product listings by using brand terms as product keywords, using GTINs and putting product attributes in separate fields.[16]
Between December 2016 and September 2017, Pricesearcher recorded 4 billion price changes globally. The country with the most price changes was the UK – one every six days.[2]
References
edit- ^ "10 ways to have a cheaper Christmas". www.independent.co.uk. The Independent. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i "Pricesearcher: The biggest search engine you've never heard of". Search Engine Watch. ClickZ Group Limited. Retrieved 27 February 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f "UK startup takes on Google with 'first ever comprehensive, unbiased shopping search engine'". www.independent.co.uk. The Independent.
- ^ "Opinion: Google Shopping changes – the start of a fairer playing field". www.retail-week.com. Retail Week. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
- ^ "Sell products online with Google Shopping Campaigns". www.google.com. Google. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
- ^ "Brighton SEO speakers". BrightonSeo.com. BrightonSEO. Retrieved 27 February 2018.
- ^ "Google rival Pricesearcher among private firms to join stock exchange capital-raising scheme". City Am. 17 September 2018. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
- ^ "Pricesearcher Hires ex-Amazon UK Head of Pricing". www.webretailer.com. 5 October 2018. Retrieved 5 November 2018.
- ^ "Google Comparison Shopping Services is a win for Pricesearcher". tamebay.com. 28 January 2019. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
- ^ "New partners launch first joint product for digital retailers – Pi PricePoint". www.pi-datametrics.com/. 5 March 2019. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
- ^ "Tools and tricks that help you get money off EVERYTHING you buy online". mirror.co.uk. 8 July 2019. Retrieved 8 July 2019.
- ^ "Pricesearcher Goes into Administration". thegazette.co.uk. 12 March 2020. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
- ^ "Pricesearcher Technology Group is formed". companieshouse.gov.uk. 20 March 2020. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
- ^ "CIO interview: Vlassios Rizopoulos, CTO, Pricesearcher.com". Computerweekly.com. Computer Weekly. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
- ^ "Googlebot". www.Google.com. Google.
- ^ "Is your product feed as good as you thought it was". Tamebay.com. 6 March 2018. Retrieved 7 March 2018.