Would you like more traffic to your website? Today we talk to Pricesearcher, a relatively new service which can give you just that. And what’s more Pricesearcher is free to use for both retailers and consumers.

Pricesearcher believe retailers and sellers of all sizes should have a platform to display their products to the world, with zero barriers to entry. It doesn’t matter how small (or big) your business is, if you’ve got products for sale then Pricesearcher want to index them and send prospective qualified buyers directly to your website.

It all sounds too good to be true, so we asked Ben Morgan, Head of Partnerships at Pricesearcher some questions to find out more:

Are you a price comparison site?

No we’re a search engine. Our aim is to provide access to the worlds prices and we already have over 300m products indexed.

Price comparison sites differ fundamentally from our model:

• They charge for traffic on a Cost Per Click (CPC) or revenue share model
• They are only able to compare prices from retailers who they have as clients and they are only able to compare a limited range of products where sufficient margin exists to cover the marketing acquisition costs.

Pricesearcher is a search engine that only sends organic traffic direct to our retail partners

Why would anyone use Pricesearcher instead of Google?

Similar to other vertical specific search engines like Youtube (Video) and Skyscanner (Travel) Pricesearcher is focused on prices and differs from Google in several respects:

From the consumer’s perspective

• We are vertical specific and so you can review a product across high st retailers, pureplays, marketplaces, price comparison sites all in one place without having to use multiple pages and multiple search queries
• Pricesearcher doesn’t crawl the web; we only work with product feeds directly from the seller and so we are able to better serve structured information to the user including our price tracker tool, buying guides, reviews, store locator, returns policy and a summary on the seller
• We have our own database and of the 300m+ products indexed there are over 5Bn respective data points. This gives the user information in terms of historical price movements over the last 30 days – our price tracker tool

From the retailer’s perspective

• Pricesearcher does not have adverts and so only offers the organic search results to consumers
• Retailers and Brands don’t need to worry about competitors bidding on their keywords to out-rank them as we are an ad-free platform
• Users of Pricesearcher convert at more than double the rate of organic traffic from other search engines (based on tests with a sample of retailers – Oct 2016. Google organic converted to sale at 1.1%, Pricesearcher organic converted at 2.4%)

If its all free then how do Pricesearcher make money?

Our team, along with our investors, believe in the value of building a business which has no barriers to entry and making it free to all sellers is a fundamental philosophy for Pricesearcher.

We are a funded business in the growth stage with the intention of monetising the site in 2-4 years’ time. There will never be a charge to have your products indexed in Pricesearcher, nor will there be a CPC or rev-share model but the likelihood is that a sponsored content strategy will be developed outside of the core search area so as not to detract from the consumer mission.

Which retailers are you already working with?

The retail partners we work with who have received free organic traffic include: Argos, AO, Mothercare, Mountain Warehouse, Dyson, BT Shop, ebuyer, F.Hinds, The Entertainer, Benefit cosmetics, Little Mistress, Miss Pap, GreenManGaming, Amazon, Flubit, Fruugo, Newegg, Blackwells, World of Books, The Works, Suit Direct, Currys, PC World and many more.

How much traffic does Pricesearcher attract?

The beta version of the site went live in July 2016 and from that starting point we are now seeing over 1m searches a month (Feb 2017 data) with a growth rate of 47% Month on Month (MoM).

How do you get your traffic?

Direct

Consumers who have used Pricesearcher previously come back to enjoy the information and convenience it provides. Word of mouth continues to spread in this regard.

Paid

New consumers find about the site from our digital marketing spend across brand, SEO, PPC, PR and social.

Can I track the traffic you send me?

Your website analytics (Google Analytics, Omniture, etc.) will pick up the referral source as Pricesearcher. In addition, you can insert your own UTM tracking into the product feed to monitor the organic traffic coming through.

How do I get started with Pricesearcher?

Visit the merchant hub and upload your product feed directly – our mission is to index all the worlds prices – and so we accept all working feeds. There’s no need to apply but obviously if you have questions then we’d be delighted to hear from you [email protected]

What does Pricesearcher do with my feed?

Nothing – we don’t manipulate, change or alter your feed. We direct the consumer directly to your site with no barriers.

How do I integrate with Pricesearcher ?

We wanted to make it as easy to upload your products to Pricesearcher as it is to upload a photo to Facebook. It was one of the first problems we looked to solve as integration is always a challenge in ecommerce.

To date, of the 300m+ products indexed, there have been no development requirements for any of our retail partners.

We have free Magento and Shopify plug-ins which offer a very simple option for users of those systems as any updates made automatically update Pricesearcher in the background. Most other partners share a URL with an XML or Google shopping feed. A Woo commerce plug-in is coming soon.

Our technology is able to take your product feed in any format it currently exists with no development or costs – the table below shows all the different methods available:

Which partners are you integrated with?

We are able to work with all of the major integration partners including the following, all of whom have existing clients already on Pricesearcher:

Is it a UK only site?

No, we’re already live in 9 countries outside of the UK (USA, Germany, France, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden) and can take your product feeds for all those countries if you have them available in the correct language and currency.

Our mission is to index all of the world’s prices.

What if something changes?

It hasn’t happened yet but should you no longer want to share your product feed you can pull it at any time. We only work directly with partners who voluntarily share their feed and we do not crawl / scrape sites. We’d love to hear from you if you have any suggestions on how we can improve [email protected]

Recommendations from our partners

Upload your feed to Pricesearcher today