Product Level Bidding for Shopzilla, NexTag and Smarter.com

When optimizing shopping comparison engines, one of the most important places to look is at the bidding structure. Most engines allow some type of manipulation when it comes to bidding on pay per click costs, so that a merchant can choose, if they would like to for example, pay $.35 per click on their item or $.75 per click. The difference is usually ranking in the search results, and ultimately exposure.

To properly find the best median in cost per click and return, a merchant should test various bids to see where the highest return occurs. An extension of that process is being able to do this on each product. Engines like Shopzilla, NexTag and Smarter.com allow this to be done within the product feed. This can be incredibly convenient for a merchant and should be taken advantage of.

By allowing adjustments, on a product by product basis, a merchant can easily test and perfect different bid strategies. This bid strategy can ideally be adjusted across groups of products of the merchant’s choosing. In some cases, this system can create unusual opportunities for a merchant using an engine like Shopzilla, which will actually still list items with a ‘0′ (zero) bid amount. The drawback is these items will be listed at the end of the search results, but the items will still be listed. This can be much better for both merchant and engine instead of removing the items entirely. Shopzilla’s theory is that it’s better to have the products listed and keep shoppers looking to Shopzilla as a source for comparison.

As a merchant, if you have not tried to varying bid strategy, this should be done before the upcoming holiday pay per click cost increases.

September 2nd, 2007