Etao Launches Historical Pricing Search Feature
Shenzhen Special Zone Daily, 12/08/11
Hangzhou-based C2C & B2C e-commerce site Taobao's ETao e-commerce search engine has launched a new "Price Drop" search function to attract price-sensitive consumers as well as certain e-commerce sites that have boycotted ETao. When users select the new function and click the search button, Etao displays various products which currently offer significant discounts on the original price, and calculates for the user the amount by which the price has been lowered. Users can also click a new icon next to any search result to display a line graph depicting how the price of the item has changed over time in recent months.
As of October 2011, ETao indexed 5,000 B2C e-commerce sites and 600 group buy sites, listing nearly 1 bln items and over 200 mln posts providing online shopping advice.
Editor's Note: For more information on this topic, please see "Rumor: Suning.com Blocks ETao Search Spiders," MD 10/27/11 issue and "360Buy Blocks ETao Search Spiders," MD 10/25/11 issue. One reason a number of B2C e-commerce sites may have been boycotting ETao is out of concern that the site had overemphasized comparison based on lowest price, and that in such a comparison, their products could not effectively compete. The new "Price Drop" feature helps highlight the best deals in terms of size of discount, such that higher quality products or more famous brands with commensurately higher prices can still compare favorably.
Keywords: e-commerce Taobao Internet B2C C2C Etao group buying online search vertical search
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