Yahoo Shopping to Partner with Pricegrabber

Posted by CPC Strategy on January 11, 2010 in Strategy

Yahoo has now made it official:

We have important news that will affect your product listings on Yahoo! Shopping and that will require you to take action.

As of March 11, 2010, Yahoo! Shopping is partnering with PriceGrabber. This partnership will provide you with greater access to more potential customers and to enhanced reporting. It will give you the opportunity to list your products either on Yahoo! Shopping only or on both Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber.

Because of this change, your Yahoo! Product Submit account will no longer be available on March 11, 2010. After March 11, 2010, to list your products either on Yahoo! Shopping only or on Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber, you must sign up for a new merchant account with PriceGrabber. To ensure your products are live on Yahoo! Shopping on March 11, 2010, you must sign up for a PriceGrabber merchant account from January 11, 2010, through January 19, 2010. Signing up is fast and easy.

If you sign up before March 11, 2010, any applicable set up fees will be waived!

If you do nothing and do not sign up for a new merchant account, your products will only be listed on Yahoo! Shopping through March 11, 2010. After March 11, 2010, your products will no longer be listed.

PLEASE NOTE: If you already have a merchant account with PriceGrabber, you do not need to sign up for a new account. Your products will automatically be listed on both Pricegrabber and Yahoo! Shopping on March 11, 2010.

Your Key Dates to Remember:

January 11, 2010	January 19, 2010	March 11, 2010
Sign up for your new PriceGrabber merchant account with Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber or with just Yahoo! Shopping.	Last day to sign up for a PriceGrabber merchant account to ensure your products are listed on Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber when Yahoo! Product Submit is discontinued on March 11, 2010.	The Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber partnership takes effect. If you have not signed up for a new PriceGrabber merchant account, this is the last day your products will be listed on Yahoo! Shopping.

In short, Yahoo Product Submit is shutting down, and listings on Yahoo Shopping will be generated via Pricegrabber data feeds.

This is big news for both companies and should help both in different ways.

What’s held Pricegrabber back from in the CSE space is that the amount of traffic that they get is slightly lower than Nextag’s/Shopzilla’s generally, and with access to Yahoo customers nowthat should help bolster their traffic (though it’s tough to tell if the traffic will be as qualified).

Yahoo will also benefit by allowing their merchants to use Pricegrabber’s tools, which are much more thorough than Yahoo’s, which in turn will let them more effectively manage their campaigns.

Also, as a company that’s been struggling over the past few years and have been cutting corners wherever they can, this should further help reduce their overall operating costs.

We’ll keep a close eye on this over the next few months and see how this move affects both companies.