Intro to a New Search Engine

[Thomas J. Vosper]

Hi, I'm Thomas, Head of Retail at Pricesearcher. I've joined this forum to engage with the UK's SME's and help put their e-commerce stores in front of as many engaged users as possible.

At Pricesearcher we are building a consumer-facing vertical search engine that captures all the world's prices. (Just as Skyscanner did for flights). To do this we ensure we are completely free -removing any commercial constraints for retailers.

There is no commission, CPC, PPC, CPA, rev share, etc.

Thousands of retailers are already present on our site.

Over 200 are leading UK retailers, but as we are ad-free we level the playing field so are particularly interested in hearing from sellers with their own sites who would benefit from more engaged buyers for free.

Our tech accepts any feed and format so we are able to index your product feed and include you in our organic search results with little or no effort on your part.

We already plug into most platforms and feed providers. Inclusion on Pricesearcher is as easy as uploading a photo onto Facebook.

We know this sounds too good to be true and we are often asked 'what's the catch?'. But there really isn't one. We are a funded business with rapid growth and when we monetize part of the site in the future, we will do so ensuring our core offer is always free.

We are already live in 10 counties: UK, USA, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark.

My background is over six years at Amazon marketplace and a couple of years helping to build one on Tesco Direct. I also spent a year in last mile logistics.The rest of the team come from roles at the likes of eBay, Dept of Trade, PwC, Sky and King.

I'd love to help retailers and brands of all shapes and sizes gain greater exposure and more sales, especially when they have great products but a limited budget and/or technical expertise.

Any questions please get in touch.

 

[fisicx]

Welcome to UKBF

I've just done a search and the results weren't good. I get much better results from Google....

 

[Raw Rob]

I've just done a search and the results weren't good. I get much better results from Google....

Agreed! I just searched "goji berries" - the second result is "Buy goji berries at PC World" and the third is "Shop for goji berries | Currys" - if anyone knows what goji berries are, you'll know that PC World and Currys don't sell them!
They look like sponsored results to me, or they're tricking your system big time.

 

[Thomas J. Vosper]

Thanks for checking us out already @fisicx ! I appreciate the immediate comparison to Google and we welcome feedback.

Please bear with us as we are less than 12 months old and still in BETA. With retailers plugging into our search engine we're able to continually improve relevance until such time that we are ready to promote to the direct consumer on mass.

That said, we've still captured half a billion products and many of the largest retailers in the UK have jumped on board. (We see a small, but not insignificant ~1M searches a month).

Please PM me with any specific details of your searches and I can highlight to our team working on relevance, machine learning and AI.

 

[Thomas J. Vosper]

Hi @Raw Rob Thanks for reviewing us already.

One of the big reasons for reaching out to the SME community is the opportunity to fill in selection gaps in the long tail - such as your search example highlights.

Our search algorithm is desperately trying to surface a result to the user. In this case, you looking for Goji Berries. It's fair to assume that right now if someone was on our site selling Goji Berries they would be the number one entry in our results.

I remember this problem 10 years ago when I was at Amazon before all the categories you might be familiar with were on site, and we are hoping we can plug these gaps to provide a comprehensive search well ahead of that schedule.

There's no sponsored results or commercial arrangement with anyone who appears on our site.

 

[Thomas J. Vosper]

"Buy goji berries at PC World"

The never-ending task of relevance for the user.....

GOJI Berries 2.0 Headphones

 

[The Byre]

Well, I couldn't resist, could I?

'Horse Blanket' - my wife and I had a discussion (she was right and I was wrong* - as usual!) about horse blankets over coffee.

So I searched that term on your site and got 30 or 31 results on the first page - two of which were for horse blankets. All the rest were books, baby blankets, jewellery, you name it and it was there, furniture, pictures, numbered prints, the lot. But just two horse blankets, one of which was from Amazon Deutschland and at £22 seemed cheap enough, probably too cheap. The other was over £120, so too expensive.

All of which reminds me that I have to change blankets on my horse this morning.

*If a man says something in the woods and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?

 

[Thomas J. Vosper]

Great to hear this feedback all. Thx

 

[Raw Rob]

Our search algorithm is desperately trying to surface a result to the user. In this case, you looking for Goji Berries. It's fair to assume that right now if someone was on our site selling Goji Berries they would be the number one entry in our results.

That's what I thought at first (as someone who sells goji berries), but you do have goji berry sellers on there, further down the listings.

(I will be adding my goji berries, especially as you accept Google shopping feeds which makes it very simple for me.)

 

[Thomas J. Vosper]

I will be adding my goji berries

Thanks Rob. We've had such an influx of sellers/retailers that we are undertaking a big piece of work with machine learning and AI to exactly address showing the right link in the right place.

Great to have you on board.

 

[TomJ83]

Hello and welcome to the forums @Thomas J. Vosper

How often does the price search engine update? How do you confirm the data that businesses input?

 

[Thomas J. Vosper]

Hello to another Thomas J. !!

Our data is provided by the retailer a number of ways.
Most commonly via URL - which we visit and update from 3x per day.
Via FTP (push or pull) - once a day
or via free Magento, Shopify or Woo plugins - in real time

 

[TomJ83]

Thanks for the reply. How much does it cost for a retailer to sign up and submit price data?

 

[Thomas J. Vosper]

Thanks for the reply. How much does it cost for a retailer to sign up and submit price data?

Nothing. No cost to sign up and no CPA, CPC, Commission, RevShare, etc. for the traffic or resulting sales.

We are investor backed, and this removes any commercial constraint.

Don't get me wrong, we'll need to find a way to make money in the future, but we're confident we can do this in a way that still ensures our core offering is free.

 

[TomJ83]

Thanks for replying. If I don't understand you wrong, you want to grow the site before monetizing it? Also what I wonder is how you make sure that the search results are relevant for what people search for. For example someone mentioned goji berries and got results of a headphone.

 

[Thomas J. Vosper]

you want to grow the site before monetizing it?

Yes. We'll only look to monetize part of the site as it is vital for us to maintain a core free offer to our retailers if we are truly able to show consumers the complete overview of prices.

The Goji Berry example is an interesting one as this is indeed a model of headphone sold at PC world. We have an algorithm that determines search and we are always working on this. As we bring more retailers offering Goji Berries we'll be able to surface improved results.

 

[The Byre]

OK, all the above to one side - here's my 30 cents worth on the site itself -

It looks like Google. The user may suspect that it is another Google-search dressed up. It needs a 'look'. It needs a clearly identifiable logo and a totally different 'look' to Google. Maybe a different background colour for starters.

And (IMO) it needs a totally different name - 'Pricesearcher' is bland and infinitely forgettable.

 

[TomJ83]

I don't think it needs another name. I think the name is good and simple. It describes very well what the website is all about. However I can agree that it needs a different look. Right now it's a bit Googlesque.