Shopzilla (Bizrate) Recent Traffic Increase?

We've noticed at least a 150% traffic increase or more from Shopzilla in the past two weeks or so. Our feed has changed a bit but from our cost report it appears the new products are not the main culprit of the traffic increase. So I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this curious jump in traffic and if so do they have any idea as to the cause?

We are finding Shopzilla's minimum bids on many categories are becoming simply too high (but they haven't changed in the past two weeks.) My gut is telling me this company is shakey financially and desperate to increase revenue. We may have to drop them as one of our shopping engine feeds if these trends continue.

Bizrate is a huge scam. They just buy traffic from the Search Engines and have this BS PPC ranking system where the more you pay, the better visibility you get. I have lost thousands to Bizrate and am planning a lawsuit. Recently we received 30 so called "leads" from them. Turned out it was all Fraud from Nigeria and Ghana. We sent them an e-mail demanding a refund and they haven't replied. I am planning to sue. Anyone else who has been ripped off by Bizrate, send me a PM, and we will build a case.

jbart976,

I am very sorry to hear that your experience with BizRate was an absolute horrid. My BizRate accounts do well, though I will admit that BizRate is on the higher cost side. Despite the cost issue, BizRate makes up about 8% of the total revenue and still very profitable.

As for BizRate SERP, I don't bid above the min bid for the category, and I have very strong presence (with many top 3 positions with some listings in the middle and bottom portion of the first SERP)...and the category does not lack competition ...I wanted to point out the bid issue as it's not the one-and-only factor that drives their algo.

I hope you get a positive resolution from them...I've had a few questionable click issues with them...but they've resolved the matter in relatively timely manner (though I will not discredit from their professional courtesy).

Best wishes to you...FYI, I am no way affiliated with BizRate/Shopizilla

I have also seen the huge increase in traffic at BizRate over the last several. It's not just with them. Similar scenario with PriceGrabber and some others, but there's has been the most pronounced.

Our ROI has tanked and is barely at breakeven. We've developed some complex internal tools to now track the marketing channels that are funneling in phone sales and will have that implemented within the next couple of weeks and this shoudl allow us to really tell what are the profitable channels vs. the unprofitable ones.

One key observation for us is that many times a customer who visits our site come to us from BizRate, NexTag, and other paid sources. This implies that they probably went to Google and saw the listings for BizRate and the other sites and just came to us through them and that to a certain degree we double paid for the same traffic.

The big mystery for us has been how to get certified on BizRate with the green face. We just can't seem to get enough reviews even though we get a ton of traffic - Any ethical tips and tricks?

We have had a giant 10x increase in traffic from Bizrate / Shopzilla and we have no explanation for it. Hour traffic is higher now than curing xmas 2007, but our conversion rate is garbage.

We have found a few items which are getting large volumes of clicks (100+ day), and we think it's probably click fraud. Before we jump to any conclusions, however, we're trying to contact our rep there. Wish me luck