Shopping bots

Shopping bots let you quickly search for merchandise across a wide selection of sites. Most bots will include "pay for placement" retailers at the top of their results lists, though, so you'll often need to re-sort by cost. Still, they are an effective way to quickly get a feel for the available deals.

Shopzilla (formerly Bizrate)

Specialty: Shopzilla, formerly known as Bizrate, has been a longtime leader in including user ratings and feedback in search results. It sees its mission as twofold: to surface great deals while providing consumers with information on the merchants offering those deals. Like the other bots, you are not purchasing things from Shopzilla, you are using it as a way to surface sites that have what you need.

Pros: Tidy, well-organized site that is usually speedy to return relevant search results from over 54,000 stores. You have a lot of choices in how to search: by product name or section, by cost range within a section or by brand, among others. The written user feedback is helpful when deciding between one merchants. When I looked for the Canon G6 digital camera, Shopzilla surfaced a deal for $505 from a well-rated retailer, including shipping and tax -- the best deal found by any of the sites mentioned in this section (though in this case, Shopping.com could match it through an additional savings opportunity; see below).

Cons: Product specifications were limited. Nothing told me the physical dimensions of the Canon G6 camera, for example, or whether the LCD could flip out and be rotated. Also, you'll need to re-sort your search results by cost to see the best deal. You can then click through to read user feedback on the merchants. It is vital to do this because colored smiley-face ratings often obscure important distinctions. I spotted a couple of camera sites with glowing green smiley faces that had different customer-service approaches, for example: One necessary users call in to "confirm" their purchase, only to put them through another sales pitch; its competitor didn't need that.