Comparison-shopping was about the first specialized Internet service to come out of the labs of the dot-com developers when the Internet initially got its start in the 90s. Most shoppers who used the early comparison shopping sites probably remember the name Bargain Finder with some fondness (retailers remember the name with much resentment). You could just go on this website and quickly see what retailer had the cheapest prices.

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Things have changed, somewhat, today. Retailers now value the ability to be seen online on the comparison-shopping sites so that customers may find that they have a product in stock at a competitive price. If you are one of the latecomers to the comparison shopping party, you really are missing out. These websites have real-time access to store inventory numbers. You can quickly find all kinds of bargains that you would never have had a chance at otherwise.

NexTag and Price Grabber are so last year .For years now, if you needed to go comparison shopping, you just used search engines like Nextag. You could go on one of these sites and they would give you a list of results much like a search engine would. There are new developments afoot this year, though. Shoppers everywhere access their Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts on their smartphones right at stores now and make social recommendations. This can influence the way people comparison shop in very important ways.

Pinterest may not really be a shopping website; but there are so many people putting their shopping recommendations up on this social website that it has become a great place to go to now, for ideas.

The top comparison shopping sites

Comparison sites usually display their product results in more or less the same way that traditional search engines display theirs – with one difference. The search results that you see on Google appear in the order they do because Google’s algorithms judge those websites to be a good match for what you search for. Apart from the advertisements that appear around the search results, the results that you see there are completely natural finds. Results on the comparison-shopping websites don’t appear there because they are particularly relevant; they appear there because the seller paid for it.

For this reason, you the shopper, might need to do a little bit more work with these websites than you would with regular search engines.

Nextag

This one is a veteran of the comparison-shopping space. This website does a lot more than to merely help you find a product at a good price. It tries to help you with group buying deals, concert tickets, hotel and airline deals and so on, as well. If you’re short of ideas for what to buy, Nextag’s Radar Search tells you what everyone else seems to like at the moment.

Google Product Search

Google has been one of the leaders in comparison-shopping for years now. They do a clever “blended search” when you search for a product – they display their paid-for Google shopping results together with their regular search results. This shopping information website from Google, though, has recently been revamped. They don’t offer a very smooth comparison-shopping experience at the moment yet.

But they do offer useful information that you wouldn’t find elsewhere. To begin with, there are quite a few ideas that you can come by looking at their editorial picks. They also let you do a very useful catalog search – where you look through their copies of nearly every paper catalog that stores across the country put out. If you’re looking for group sale deals Google offers can give you plenty of fodder here, too.

Price Grabber

This is arguably the best of the comparison-shopping sites – with one important caveat. It is owned by the credit rating agency Experian. When you search, you can expect with them to inundate you with targeted advertising. Experian is able to do this because they have so much data on everyone. If you don’t really worry about your privacy, Price Grabber is undoubtedly top of the heap. If you do worry, all the other websites should really bring the deals home to you that you long for.

Summary
The comparison-shopping websites can be an excellent source of great deals. There are many of them, though, and they operate in slightly different ways. Which shopping search engine should you go to and what should you expect from them? This article gives you timely information to help you find the best deals and the best shopping ideas .