Price Comparison Websites - HELP!

[stevon]

Does anyone know how price comparison sites work - they submit your details to loads of different websites and find you the cheapest site, yes? But do they need to cooperation of the companies that they check to get the price or is there some clever coding that goes through all these websites to get the quotes? Does anyone know where I could find someone who is able to code something similar to a price comparison website?

Thanks,
Stephen

 

[DreamLifestyle]

The likes of the energy comparison sites, basically show the companies that give them the biggest sign up fee as the best company to sign up with.

 

[stevon]

I was thinking more on the lines of the Tesco Car Insurance website... Lets just say I was setting up a price comparison website for car insurance (I'm not) - would I need to contact all the insurance companies individually and be like "I'm setting up a website, can I have your cooperation" and they would give me access to their quoting system or is there some sort of system that basically inputs all the information to all the different websites, compares the prices and returns the results for the user of the website?

I'm just a bit unclear on how it works...

 

[sm1]

Usually the companies that list on these sites submit their offers and deals to the comparison site. This can be in a format that is universally recognised so that it is processed and shown on the website.