And as fast as comparisonshopping sites are bought up, new ones are born. The past year alone saw the launch of Smarter, Become, and EDeals. The pedigrees of these startups vary. Become’s founders are the same people who started MySimon in 1998 and sold it two years later to CNet for $350 million. Whereas EDeals, a site that includes coupons and auction results, was launched on December 1, by a 22year old college dropout and five developers in Chenai, India. [ For Best of The Web’s complete reviews of 12 comparisonshopping sites, click here.It’s no wonder that comparisonshopping sites are springing up around the Web. The technology needed to build these sites is relatively easy to acquire, and if you can build enough of an audience and thus attract clicks, the spoils are great. Most comparisonshopping sites make money when shoppers click on their links. HitWise, a market research firm, reports that 5.3 of traffic to online retailers was driven by comparisonshopping sites during the first week of December. That’s up 26 from a year ago. And according to ComScore Networks, consumers will spend $82.7 billion online for nontravel purchases in 2005. For consumers, the intense competition for clicks is a boon because comparison sites are getting better at taking the hassle out of holiday shopping. On the surface, most of these sites serve up the same product data because Web merchants, eager to generate volume, push their inventories out to as many sites as possible. The best comparisonshopping sites, however, provide a superior merchandising experience, almost like going into a wellstocked and organized department store whose displays and aisles are brimming with the most alluring and best deals of the day. Some sites offer easy access to product research, shipping and “true costs” calculators. Some serve up coupons, and highlight free shipping deals or generous return policies. The key is to stand out at a time when comparisonshopping searches will tell you, for example, that a 4gigabyte IPod Nano is available at 23 stores. Some online retailers will even lose money to gain your business. In the third quarter, for example, Amazon nasdaq: AMZN news people lost $47 million on shipping, based on free shipping offers on its site.One good way to find deals is to find the cheapest price on a comparisonshopping site and then check at Ebates to see if there’s a rebate offered for the merchant you found.There are other ways that comparisonshopping sites vie for shopper loyalty. Most now port their services to wireless devices, such as cell phones. And mobile searching is about to get even more advanced, as users with camera phones will soon be able to scan bar codes with their phones for instant price checks. Amazon offers the service, which it calls ScanSearch, in Japan. Scanbuy and NextCode offer similar services here in the U.S.

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