ShopWiki is one of the most creative, intuitive concepts I have ever seen spun from the comparison shopping engine business model. Their crawler based CSE is smart, powerful and capable of including products from nearly every merchant seller online (given the site is crawler friendly). ShopWiki is also currently the most recognized shopping engine in existence that utilizes the power of user generated content through their built-in wiki platform.

ShopWiki was originally founded by two ex-DoubleClick execs, Kevin Ryan and Dwight Merriman, and Eliot Horowitz in 2005. Since launch, ShopWiki has continued on their goal to find and index every possible offer by a merchant that can be purchased online. ShopWiki is an advanced shopping crawler, product engine, wiki or gift guide, social community and much more. They currently even offer user submitted shopping video content and product reviews.

ShopWiki is the ultimate shopping search engine, combining powerful Web-crawling technology with wiki buying and gift guides. ShopWiki doesn’t sell any products and doesn’t charge retailers to include their products in your search results.

ShopWiki’s Overlooked Blog:

• Official ShopWiki Blog

The ShopWiki Overlooked Blog gives the people behind the ShopWiki concept a new place where they can share daily product finds, sites and other unusual offers from around the Web with users. Anyone interested in finding new creative products and merchant shops from industry professionals who know their stuff should certainly save and tune in to the Overlooked Blog by ShopWiki.

ShopWiki Mobile Search:

• Official ShopWiki Mobile

ShopWiki also offers a mobile version of their comparison shopping search. As far as I know, they were one of the first CSE’s to release a mobile version of their product shopping engine and have certainly gained many more users by offering their technology and tools through mobile devices. Now shoppers can find and buy their favorite products “on the go” with ShopWiki’s official mobile shopping site.

James Keating Answers 10 Questions About ShopWiki:

Roughly how many merchants are included within ShopWiki?

ShopWiki.com includes products from over 200,000 merchants in the US, plus another 50,0000 in the international markets we’re entering, such as the UK (ShopWiki.co.uk), Australia (ShopWiki.com.au), and even France (ShopWiki.fr).

ShopWiki.com crawls ecommerce stores to actively pull in products from any store we find on the Internet. This is very different than a typical shopping comparison engine which waits for a merchant to send them a data feed. We will present products from merchants even if they don’t opt in for premier placement, which makes it the most comprehensive shopping search engine on the web.

Roughly how many products are included within ShopWiki?

There are over 250 million offers in ShopWiki.com!

Roughly how many individuals currently work on ShopWiki support and coding teams?

There are 7 people writing code at ShopWiki.com, and since we use crawlers, there is minimal need for support, with two people available for merchants to work with. The automation and self service we designed in from the beginning makes it possible to run ShopWiki.com with a modest size team. As we expand into more countries, we will bring on staff with native language skills for those markets. We even manage to squeeze in some fun with our blog (blog.shopwiki.com) to comment on the wonderful diversity of product ideas and ponder their potential usage.

What other places across the Internet, if any, are merchants and products included?

We have done co-branded shopping solutions for MensHealth, and have been speaking with several other sites about working together. As those distribution deals are launched, we will announce them.

What, in your opinion, are the highlight features ShopWiki offers it’s users?

The completeness of shopping search is ShopWiki.com’s core strength. Our shopping search engine will find anything and everything for sale on the Internet. We also make sifting through all of those options a breeze by using natural language in our search, such as “burnt orange strapless dress for under $100″.

What, in your opinion are the highlight features ShopWiki offers merchants?

Ease of participation: We’re probably already crawling your site, so include us in your CPA affiliate program, and we will do all the rest to give you preferred placement in the search results.

Are new features being added and updated often? How often would you say?

Every week we make improvements to the site and the infrastructure, some major, some minor. All updates are aimed at improving our ability to find stores with new features, better layouts for shoppers, etc. to make it easier for visitors to find the products at the stores they know and discover stores they didn’t know. We also continuously improve the crawling technology to find more stores and more products.

How does ShopWiki plan to stay competitive with sites like Amazon and eBay marketplaces?

Due to the nature of our crawling technology, we can easily foresee having greater selection than Amazon, and become the de-facto standard to start shopping.

Where do you see ShopWiki in the next 3-5 years?

ShopWiki.com has been designed from the ground up to roll out to just any country in the world, especially smaller countries that would have a hard time supporting a traditional shopping comparison engine relying on data feeds. You’ll see our presence in the US increase, as well as establish a global presence. Any country with even a modest ecommerce market is prime for ShopWiki.com to help shoppers and merchants come together.

What Online product marketplaces, other than ShopWiki, do you personally use to shop from?

Of course, Amazon is a favorite of mine, and I enjoy reading shopper’s opinions on stores at Reseller Ratings before I try a new store. Epinions has been a treasure trove of product information, to which I’ve even contributed.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

To James: I would like to personally express my thanks for your participation in this interview style QandA, despite your demanding schedule and responsibilities. Myself and our readers sure appreciate the detailed thought and effort you have put into each of your answers, allowing for all of us to get to know your CSE a bit better. I like the fact that you have started with your goal and stuck to it over the years by building up your crawler technology to the point it’s at now. I love the crawler approach as opposed to the “submission of data” model. It’s great that merchants can get products included within ShopWiki without paying or going through the trouble of generating and submitting a data feed. Another wise move, in my opinion, has been your recent jump into the international shopping-scape. Hopefully that continues to help you grow beyond expectations!! Thanks again James, and please don’t hesitiate to send us any feature releases, updates or announcements in the future.

To our readers: I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading our most recent comparison shopping engine (CSE) QandA with James from ShopWiki.com. I have several more interviews in the works with other comparison engines, data feed companies and top 100 retailers in the future. You may also wish to read back in the archives at some of the ecommerce interviews we have already conducted.

ShopWiki is Featured as one of the comparison shopping wikis on our Product Listing Guide!