Comment by passion__desire
2 years ago
Why isn't there a search engine specifically for e-commerce websites?
Generally what I do is I search for X on google. Google throws up some shitty suggestions. I go on to those websites to checkout their products. Facebook comes to know about my intent of buying X since they have their sdk integration with these websites. When I open instagram, facebook starts suggesting X selling websites to me. I check out those and buy X from there.
I have observed this effect 3 times personally.
Infact such a search engine will optimize towards a better buying experience. Reviews, best things to look for when buying X, price sensitivity, whether X can be delivered to your area, etc.
The market for discovery in general is really under served almost across all areas.
Magazines and to some extent brick and mortar stores used to serve the product discovery market but right now it's so hard to find a product that fits your needs.
So much bait-and-switch nonsense and straight up scams.
Doesn't help that many e-commerce sites are such a pain in the ass to use. 45 second page loads with an additional 15 seconds of random layout shifts is comparatively good. Product listings that show like 6 items per screen, in a random order with useless and truncated descriptions and no useful search function.
I don't understand how they're getting any sales at all.
Because Google didn't have enough time in 25 years to fix that. Or they make more money on ads than straight referrals.
Is there a way to tell facebook, I am looking for X? Because facebook suggestions are much better than plain google.
Search it on marketplace?
1 reply →
I haven't used it for a while, but there is a website called 'staticice' that appears to still be an e-commerce price/product search engine. I'm not sure how it works, maybe the sites sign up, or provide prices, or staticice scrapes. It's mostly for gadgets and computer parts but has worked well enough a few times.
Similar to pcpartpicker but much less 'utility', just pure search for model w/ price.
I wonder how one would discover websites like this currently though -- it's certainly not in google's interest to make the top result infobox something like "Didn't find what you are looking for? Try searching using this other site: goodcommercesearch.net" !
I am working on building e-commerce search engine https://itemfinder.ae/.
Would be great If you can share you feedback and suggestions
There is for the german speaking countries and it is called Geizhals[1]. It allows A LOT of detailed filters for different categories and shows you websites offering that product. Most times when I need something I just input my criteria for the thing I want to buy and look for the best price to performance ratio of the products that fulfil my criteria.
[1] https://geizhals.de/
There sort of is, at least in Europe with Google's CSS providers. IIRC there's a few dozen aggregators and aggregators must have at least 50 merchants in order to be a CSS partner. The products are shown as a carousel and can undercut Google by 20% due to tax/competition reasons. I'm not fluent on the underlying reasons- the results are also on Google shopping.
There are price comparison websites, high-quality reviews (rtings, notebookcheck, maybe wirecutter), deals sharing websites (pepper et al).
Amazon is that for most people.
For cakes?