Best Comparison Shopping Search Engines

What is the best comparison shopping search engine, Google, Yahoo!? It depends, and often neither. These mighty search engines can only do so much with the enormous amount of information on the Net. Comparison shopping search engines often perform better as they are devoted to retailers, products, prices, and savings. Following is a list of the arguably best shopping search engines for quality merchandise, bottom-line pricing, product reviews, and, best of all, money-saving coupons and offers.

Yahoo! Shopping vs. Froogle: Yahoo's comparison shopping search engine offers a somewhat superior selection of vendors, extensive product ratings, and reviews. Google's comparison shopping search engine, Froogle, is useful if you want to include eBay listings, search by zip code, or include physical maps of a store.

Both comparison shopping search engines are a bit cumbersome to navigate so sans eBay listings, Yahoo! comes out ahead. Include these two sites in your shopping arsenal, but know better alternatives exist.

Save Money Comparison Shopping, Online Deals

ShopLocal.com: Hidden gem for savings, find local sales as well as online deals. Useful features include the ability to browse store flyers and sales ads online, and both average and higher-end retailers maintain listings here. This comparison shopping search engine is very easy to use. Simply enter a zip code and find sales galore.

Edeals.com: Popular shopping search engine designed for finding online coupons and coupon codes. Edeals primarily caters to a limited selection of popular retailers. Shop by store, category, or keyword, and find discounts from Dell, Target, Wal-Mart, Overstock.com, and several other vendors.

Price Comparison Shopping Engines

Shopzilla.com: Leading destination in comparison shopping search engines maintains information on over 30 million products and 90,000 stores. The Web site's best feature is pricing followed by navigation. Shopzilla owns Bizrate so save time by using this broader search engine.

Search through a number of categories, including clothes, home and garden, computers, jewelry and more, even free cell phones. Then easily refine your search with options on the left menu, (great for computer shopping), and sort results by price or relevance. Finished results from this comparison shopping search engine are clear and useful, providing vendor ratings, shipping information and a highlighted best price.

PriceGrabber.com: Don't be surprised by shipping costs with PriceGrabber. This site calculates bottom-line, with shipping, pricing. This comparison shopping search engine, like Shopzilla, is highly functional and easy to navigate. While searching for an "Acer Aspire" the results included several substantially lower-priced Acer's than Shopzilla. However, when searching for a particular model, 3690, the pricing was the same, save for a refurbished model. PriceGrabber includes decent computer outlets, such as TigerDirect, but not as many vendors overall as does Shopzilla.

Shopping.com: Popular, easy-to-use comparison shopping site offering information on many brand names. The downside is the inclusion of several unknown vendors. If you are comfortable and somewhat well-informed with this type of shopping, buying from individuals and unfamiliar places, it is a worthwhile stop for finding the best price.

Buy.com: Bells and whistles galore, designed for those who love to shop. Excellent graphics, shopping guide (Guidester's Recommendations), suggested keywords, Buy TV, and Top 10 lists offer shopping guidance. You may not find the best price at this comparison shopping site, but you'll find a good approximation and plenty of useful information.

Niche Comparison Shopping

Products with millions of selections, such as books, deserve there own category for comparison shopping, and computer shopping is an education in itself. Additionally, several other products, from autos to music, benefit from niche' shopping searches. Though limited, deserving a separate article, here are a few niche comparison shopping sites to supplement the general comparison shopping search engines.

Computers:

• Cnet.com, PCMag.com, Computershopper.com

Books:

• (Used) Bookfinder.com (over 125 million books, several vendors), AbeBooks.com
  
• (New or used) Books.google.com (search full text), Amazon.com, Froogle.com (shines on books)

About Comparison Shopping Online

No need to visit several sites to comparison shop, at least not as many as one would think. These mega comparison shopping search engines cover multiple retailers and vendors and often perform better than the general search engines. Lastly, when shopping online, consider these tips:

*Verify vendor's reputation
*Consider shipping costs and taxes
*Ensure pricing is bottom-line
*Note if price quote is rebate-based
*Use more than one shopping search engine
*Review return policy
*Check out warranties