The End Of Price Comparison Or Just Google's Love Affair With Them?

Sometimes I use price comparison sites to find products to add to my blogs, and this got me thinking about how useful they are to the general internet user.

I wish I had more information about the source of their traffic. But it looks like they're getting used less and less. Has Google lost its love affair with listing Kelkoo et al or have people decided that if they just don't like them any more?

Well, I remember when Kelkoo used to have over 1.5 million pages in the Google index, now they only seem to have 33,000. Comparestoreprices used to have well over a million (I think) and they're down to 861,000. But look at dealtime, they have over 13 million pages indexed. MyVoucherCodes have 54,900 as they now play on their voucher codes success and links by adding product feeds.

If you look at the chart, the traffic is falling, and despite a huge jump from Dealtime, which I believe co-incides with the increase in indexed pages - I think these sites really need to revist their seo and offering to the users.



But can affiliates learn anything from this? Well, I use the Shopwindow service solely as a way to refer users to products and not as a site in itself. I much prefer to hand-pick products and review them individually - and I feel this is the way forward. There are many blogs out there that are making shit loads (including a couple of mine) and they use the same methodology. Google loves unique content, users love it too, and so do those who have the ability to create links and use social bookmarking tools.

I wonder if the same will happen to discount code sites as they attract more and more affiliate attention. Google will start to spot duplicate content and offer codes just as they did years ago with the generic shopping sites and price comparison sites.

So get typing!