by Ken Reigle

Created on: February 05, 2008   Last Updated: September 22, 2008

Caveat Emptor "Let the buyer beware". This Latin bit of wisdom is excellent advice for all potential buyers and should be kept in mind whether making a purchase in person or online. Shopping.com is an excellent resource for product comparisons, price shopping, and feature research, yet a few things should be understood while perusing this site. I personally love using Shopping.com and even more so after learning how to navigate around the noise.

The primary thing to remember is that Shopping.com exists to make money. I know, it's difficult to fathom that a company would want to profit by using the Internet. I say more power to them, yay capitalism and all that jazz, but for us consumers, we need to be a little more savvy if we want to glean the most from our shopping experience. So, how do they do it?

The primary money making approach used by Shopping.com is the cost-per-click mechanism. Shopping.com charges retailers a specific amount each time a potential customer clicks a link that directs them to the retailer's website. The retailer determines how much they're willing to pay per click, and in part, this determines how and where the retailer appears in the result list. This is not so much a problem for consumers, but good to know nonetheless.

A second way Shopping.com makes money is by allowing retailers to become what they call "featured stores." That is to say, companies pay Shopping.com for the privilege of their store appearing higher on the list of places selling the product you're researching. Retailers do this by being the highest bidder on a cost-per-click basis per category. The top cost-per-click bidders always show up first. This is basically the same approach Google uses in their search engine. Have you noticed that the default query result list on Shopping.com shows items sorted by featured store?

It's easy enough to circumvent the default sort by clicking the "Sort by:" control in the upper left hand portion of the results window. From there, you can sort by price, most likely from low to high. I always like to see the lowest price at a featured store that has a high store rating and free shipping. These are generally excellent places to purchase from, as it shows the retailer is serious about getting your business, and other consumers have been happy with them.

Another activity to be wary of is what I call pumping and bashing. Pumpers are people who write glorious reviews of a product or store in an effort to get you to believe the product or store

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