As reported by many today, Yahoo Shopping is not technically disappearing, but changing completely. PriceGrabber product listings will instead populate Yahoo Shopping listings beginning in March, so consumers will continue to see product results. However, make no mistake, this will make Yahoo essentially a glorified affiliate for PriceGrabber and will be the end of Yahoo Shopping as it has been.

The makeover at Yahoo has been nothing short of dramatic. As written about here at ChannelDollars back in July of 2008, the Yahoo and Microsoft wedding was bound to occur. The eventual transfer of Yahoo search results to Bing created listings certainly spelled the end of Yahoo Search Submit Pro (YSSP). Since Yahoo was no longer creating the actual search results they would display, YSSP was a de facto victim of the merger along with Jerry Yang. (By the way, YSSP was supposed to end on 12/31/09, but traffic actually continued until 1/5/10. For merchants still on the platform, congrats, you received 5 days of free traffic.)

The interesting part is that Yahoo Shopping has now been targeted in a bigger reorganization effort, and this should be a bellweather to those following the industry. For one, it is indeed a victory for PriceGrabber, as reported by some other blogs and ecommerce sites. The PriceGrabber network has managed to envelope CNet, AOL Shopping (again), and now Yahoo Shopping.

Can anyone say consolidation?

Does this also indicate just how hard it is to make a comparison engine work in the first place?

Primarily though, it signals continued change in the industry. Yahoo has made vocal their desire to focus on content, but this is also a passing of the torch, because Yahoo Shopping had been one of the original giants in the comparison engine industry. Before Shopzilla and Bizrate came together, and before Froogle decided to start changing names, Yahoo was a monster. Yahoo Shopping still generates huge amounts of traffic according to companies like Hitwise, however anyone using Yahoo Shopping over the past several years can testify that traffic and subsequent sales became proportionately smaller compared to other leading comparison engines like NexTag, Shopping, and the aforementioned Shopzilla. Yahoo was late to the game in adding bidding technology, and continued to fall behind in aggressively focusing traffic into finely tuned search results. Instead, I think it’s safe to surmize that the Shopping aspect of Yahoo was of little focus internally, and essentially left to run.

This leads us to the result in today’s news. Yahoo decided that they could make more money displaying PriceGrabber listings than Yahoo’s own listings. Not terribly surprising, considering they have also abandoned being a search company.  The real question is, are there larger lessons here? Will this be the time that comparison engines consolidate to a handful of large players, and numerous specialized sites?

Regardless of the answers, it’s worth taking a step back and recognize the passing of one of the originals, and the continued transformation of what was once an internet worldbeater, in Yahoo.

Key CSE Features

Category level bidding…hooray! For a long time merchants were handcuffed by not having many levers to pull in trying to increase traffic. Since search relevancy was based almost entirely on keyword content and past history, it could take a long time for new products and new merchants to gain clicks or sales. Now, Yahoo offers the ability to set bids by category in the Yahoo UI. As good competitive intelligence, Yahoo will also show what the top 5 bids are within each category. This gives a good sense a of how bids should be placed.

Support is also great for Yahoo. Yahoo is one of only a few channels that offer phone support for immediate concerns. Any merchant who has panicked because something is seriously wrong with listings during busy season should be able to appreciate this option.

Potential Hurdles

One potential hurdle is watching out for Yahoo featuring a product on it’s Yahoo Shopping homepage or on other areas of it’s ad network. The product will be featured for a 24 hour period, and the merchant has no advance notice of this. In my experience, a merchant can expect a huge surge of traffic during this time (perhaps 10 times or more than regular amounts). This can create havoc with tight budgets,and usually ROI is not as good. Currently, there is no way to turn this off, or opt out of being featured.

Another possible issue comes with images. Earlier in 2008, I saw several instances where Yahoo retained old images for products. I have not seen this happen recently with Yahoo, but if a merchant sees old images displaying, call into support and ask for a full image refresh. This will fix the issue as Yahoo will flush out all previously saved images and pull directly from current image locations provided in the most recent feed.

Hope this helps, and next post is the ‘monster’ of CSEs: Shopzilla

Bidding officially launches on August 13th for category level bidding on Yahoo Shopping. As a merchant, it’s a good idea to schedule some time on this day to browse through categories and adjust your (as of the 13th) minimum bids.

I expect as the day and week progress, whatever changes made will loose some traction as other merchants begin to raise bids in their respective categories. Watch out consumer electronics!

So, it’s best to be conservative at first and raise bids at least a few pennies above minimum. Get your products out of the big bin of merchants who are either too lazy, too busy, or too ignorant to take advantage of this new system. Come back in a few days and see how the products are displaying. At that point, start making new adjustments, and with all engines, make sure to check back in a couple of months when dreaded holiday rates begin to kick in. (Officially no word on whether Yahoo will institute holiday increases on bids, but it’s a pretty safe bet).

If you are a retailer, it means you getting more options. Yahoo has until now ranked items based on keyword relevancy, categorization, click history, and costumer feedback. With the adoption of a bidding mechanism, Yahoo will create more competition and more flexibility in terms of how merchants may list their products. Listing has been difficult for some merchants who struggle to get traffic in Yahoo’s large database of products. Implementing this feature will mean merchants how have not been able to gain significant history, and thereby rankings, can now push their items to the top of result pages.

If you are watching Yahoo in general, this is a welcome sign. Yahoo used to host the premier comparison engine but has lagged behind in the last couple of years. Innovations have been few and far between, traffic has been tepid, and retailers have seen flat sales overall. This bidding introduction shows a renewed effort to bring Yahoo into the present with a bidding type of algorithm that has been widely adopted by most other major comparison shopping engines, from Shopping to Shopzilla to NexTag.

So retailers and industry watchers take note, perhaps Yahoo intends to play a bigger role in Q4 this year.

Here is a quick checklist of things I would suggest doing for each of the below comparison shopping engines.

Amazon : Watch your feedback. The feedback rating of the seller is factored into relevancy and exposure for the merchant. This can even push a merchant out of the buy box. A good rule of thumb is to keep feedback above 90% or risk loosing business.

Google : This is a good tip for Google, but also for all other engines as well. Be sure to fill out all payment and delivery information as part of the company policies. Many engines sort and rank based on these items so ensure all shipping information is filled out, any international shipping options are filled out, and any payment information is properly filled out. Also, think about getting Google Checkout if possible.

MSN Live : When uploading a file, also check back for the FTP status and upload status. Live is still in Beta and Microsoft seems to have this as a lower priority. I’ve noticed many times if using an automated upload, things can periodically go wrong and it’s easy to have a feed not processing if you are not checking regularly.

MSN Shopping : Look for additional ad banners and demographic targeting. The nice thing about MSN Shopping is that as part of the MSN network, they have many opportunities to drive traffic from a specific placement in MSN Shopping, all the way to an integrated advertisement on MSN.com.

PriceGrabber : Think about adding featured products which stand out on category pages. If not check out the ROI tracking post from a few days ago: Using the ROI Tracker on PriceGrabber

Pronto : Try to encourage feedback from costumers. Pronto has a cool feedback system where users are encouraged to leave feedback on items, sellers, and manufacturers to create an enhanced 2.0 experience. To leave feedback, just sign up for a Pronto account, click on items and leave the feedback. Having customers do this can help the visibility of a merchant’s popular products here.

Smarter : Check the categorization of items. Over the course of many product feeds, sometimes an item can be placed in another category than what was intended based on the engine’s attempts to properly place products. Check back through the account user inteface (UI) and make sure all products are residing the proper categories every few weeks.

Shopping.com : Check out the recent post on title set up, best advice I can offer: Read the Directions: Optmizing on Shopping.com

Shopzilla – Bizrate : When sending bidding in the product feed, the bids which show in Shopzilla’s UI is not what is necessarily being fed in the product data feed. Make sure to not go back and forth between making bidding adjustments between the UI and the feed, stick to one system and ride with it. Lastly, do this realizing that the UI will be a quick update which can be easily seen, and the product feed update will need to be tracked on the merchant’s or service provider’s side.

Yahoo Shopping : If you are a merchant who regularly changes images, keep in mind Yahoo Shopping will never refresh an image file automatically. If you change your picture, change the image name so Yahoo can process the new request. Otherwise, if you do update the image and keep the same image file name, then you will need to call Yahoo directly and ask for a complete refresh on all images. The support is courteous and friendly, and can get this done within 24 hours.

Another note to all these and engines not mentioned would be a standard rule to set engines to auto replenishment. Many times I have seen a merchant’s feed go down because they ran out of funds. Email alerts can be set up if you have a tight budget, but keep in mind these automated alerts are just as likely to be overlooked as to go directly to your Spam folder. If at all possible, set the feed to auto replenishment so your feed is not down for days until the account is refunded.

Taking over for Meg will be John Donahoe, formerly President of eBay Marketplaces. He will face a laundry list of challenges as eBay has slowed in growth, and has seen an increase in dissatisfaction among users. I guess a best wishes comment here would be in order.

I am putting this out there not only because it is a big deal, but also because I had seen whispers about this online. Does this mean Yahoo! is really about to lay-off a few thousand employees to streamline it’s own operations? Does that mean Yahoo and eBay are secretly bidding to absorb ChannelAdvisor? Hmm, it will be interesting to watch as there have been several notable rumors posted recently.

The change has effected an undetermined amount of merchants by altering the XML pricing layout by switching the location of the retail and selling price of an item. If a merchants displays both retail price and sale price on a Yahoo! Store, they may want to check to see how the information is being mapped into the pricing fields of the Yahoo XML feed.

Below is a quick illustration of how the pricing is currently being put together in some versions. Notice formatting of each field for both sale and retail or MSRP price:

<Pricing>
<BasePrice>419.00</BasePrice>
<LocalizedBasePrice>419.00</LocalizedBasePrice>
<SalePrice>339.00</SalePrice>
<LocalizedSalePrice>339.00</LocalizedSalePrice>
</Pricing>

I would suggest anyone running a Yahoo! Store should check their XML ObjInfo files to see if this change has altered their pricing. Many merchants are currently sending or displaying retail pricing on CSEs. This could be a time for a clever merchant to rake in a bunch of sales while everyone else catches up.