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The quickest and easiest way to shop online is to use a "shop bot", but what are they, shop bot's are online comparison service that searches for the best price from 100's of retailers so you don't have to go to each shop individually, this service is free and a very useful yardstick to instantly see if the price is competitive, the way the shop bot's earn their money is,
1 of 2 ways,
Number 1, They will charge the retailer for every person they send to their site, or
Number 2, they take a percentage of any sale that result from sending you to the retailers.
Most sites will also have sponsored links and advertising banners, every time you click on them the site will earn revenue.
Below is a list of sites I regularly visit, be careful some are not what they seem, some sites get retailers to bid for their position in the search results, so they results are biased towards the retailers that earn the shop bot more revenue, not which is the cheapest, I will mention this in the info about each shop bot, each search only takes 30 seconds, so it is worth checking them all then check for the Retailers that work in partnership with "Cashback sites", I will give you more information on "cashback sites" later on in this website.
Pricerunner
www.pricerunner.co.uk
Pricerunner has access to 4000 retailers, and 2.6 million prices.
Retailers include,
Dixons, Comet, Dell, Pixmania, Amazon, PC World, Sainsburys, Laura Ashley, John Lewis, Digital Direct & Misco.
Launched in Sweden in 1999 and the UK in 2000, Valueclick bought this site in 2004 for £16 million, advertisers pay per click through to a retailer and for flashing banners, it also features a high percentage of retailers, where it's possible Pricerunner tries to show prices including delivery, it also displays as many prices as possible regardless of whether retailers pay for an advert or not, this site also has a large forum.
Google Product Search
http://www.google.co.uk/products
Formally known as "Froogle", it has been in BETA testing since 2002, this isn't really a shop bot but it does deserve to be in the list as it doesn't charge for listings, and it doesn't make any commission on sales, there are no payments to "Google Product Search" for products to appear at the top of the search results, so this site is entirely impartial and is a good site to start with, this site makes money by having sponsored links on he right hand side of the results.
Kelkoo
http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/
Founded in 1999, merged with Shop Genie in 2000, April 2004 Kelkoo was bought by Yahoo Inc, for 450 million euros, Kelkoo covers more categories than most other comparison sites including, clothes, travel, electronics & Ebay auctions, unfortunately though retailers have to bid for placements in the search results that are returned to you, but it is still a very good site.
41 of the top 50 retailers are signed up to Kelkoo, so you will get a large selection of results including,
Amazon, Dabs.com, Play.com, Dell, Argos, Boots, Carphone Warehouse, Comet, Currys, Dixons, GAME, Jessops, John Lewis, O2, Vodafone, Sainsburys, Tesco & WH Smith.
Pricegrabber
http://www.pricegrabber.co.uk/
Pricegrabber is currently the 5th most visited shopping engine, Experian bought Pricegrabber in 2005 for $485 million.
Retailers include,
E buyer.com, Misco, Comet, Amazon & ASDA.
Shopping.com
http://uk.shopping.com/
Previously Dealtime.com, Dealtime was founded in Isreal in 1998, in 2003 the site was re-launched Shopping.com, this site is continuously in the top 10 visited sites following Ebay and Amazon, Ebay bought Shopping.com in June 2005, so expect a lot of results to show Ebay auctions, buy it now's & Ebay shops, I heard a rumbling that Ebay are intergrating Paypal into Shopping.com to ease the process of purchasing items through the site, all merchants have to pay to be listed in the search results,
Retailers include,
IT247.com, Laskys, Misco, John Lewis, Dabs.com, BT shop, Amazon & Dell.