The Rise of Websites that search other Websites

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The most common of these sites are Google and Bing.

However, I am now seeing a huge proliferation of sites that search other sites and give results back from searching these sites.

Other Common Examples being:

Expedia, Priceline and Kayak for travel.

Trivago and hotels.com with a really annoying spokesman for Trivago) for Hotels

Everquote and Esurance for insurance. They don’t insure anyone, just refer to other insurance companies for quotes, although I see that Esurance was bought by Allstate.

Carmax.com and Cars.com for automobiles.

Zillow.com and realtor.com for real estate

I see a more complete list can be found here and there is a lot more of them than I originally thought

2

What is your point? Why is this in the Pit?

3

My point is that websites that search other websites are just repeating what can be found on the original sites.

For example: Trivago doesn’t physically provide a hotel or anything related, it just gives a list of hotels that can be booked through them.

Why use the searching site when you can go directly to the source (in this case the hotel) to book it ?

I suppose the advantage is that the Megasearch site gives more options in the listings but ultimately, the booking is done by the individual site

Thanks

4

So I can go to one site and see/compare the consolidated results of a dozen or hundred other sites? I’m failing to see the problem here.

5

Let me explain this in another way.

When the Ann Lander column started, she got the advice column position by contacting the experts that she knew in social circles by asking them directly for the advice for the sample questions asked.

The point being is why ask a secondary source as opposed to going directly to the source ?

Of course, the drawback of that is that the direct source can be quickly overwhelmed with these questions

(Which is why in most governments, there are elected representatives as opppsed to a single person)

Thanks

6

Don’t forget camelcamelcamel, the amazon.com pricetracker.

7

Moved to MPSIMS.

8

If there were a monopoly on internet travel/hotel/shopping, then this could work.

There is not. There are, to quote the Travelocity ads, hundreds.

If you want to go to all of them, individually, even the ones you don’t know about, to try to find the best price, well, that’s you’re prerogative, but that’s hardly the most efficient use of your time.

9

Exactly, and I don’t understand this Straight Dope site either. Why people ask these question from Cecil ? I mean just google it, man.

10

I heard that Cecil Adams isn’t even his real name. :eek:

11

You’re essentially asking why people comparison shop. The answer is because it saves people money. A single site that puts all the options side by side is more convenient and efficient than searching each site individually.

12

Welcome to like 15 (or more) years ago. I was using search engines before Google existed (wasn’t everyone?) and I remember using Priceline and some other travel search aggregator/affiliate sites in the '90s. I remember Hotels.com commercials on tv in 2002. I even ran some very basic sites like this starting around 2001. I mostly did commercial telecom and business niches, though.

Searching “other sites” is sort of the whole point of a comparison shopping engine and what makes people want to use these sites. Want to rent a car from Enterprise? Cool, go to their website. Want to choose from several results and compare terms and pricing? Go to a comparison site. And the “other sites” choose to be included because it makes them money, too. It’s just comparison shopping and competition.

13

Thanks

I understand all of the points made very well.

I was just amazed at the proliferation of websites that search other websites.:smiley:

I wonder what the most number of levels that that any of these search sites go through ?

ie Google searching through Hotels.com which searches for Marriot Hotels website which then searches for restaurants within the Marriot. (4 levels)

14

Carmax is a chain of used car dealerships, not a search website…

15

Good point on that. They are supersized used car dealer. However, they do search some of the car manufacturing sites for new models.

However, you are right, I should not have used them as an example

Thanks