Shopping services on the Net have personalities designed to reflect the many different shopping styles of people. Are you a bargain shopper? Then you might like the "intelligent software agents" that allow you to compare prices. Do brand names matter more to you? Then try the ones that let you search by the brand name of products or are limited to up-scale shops. There are also general-purpose agents that take you to the equivalent of a virtual Wal-Mart and specialty agents that search only limited areas, such as bookstores.
Bear in mind that the "bots" – short for software robots – change all the time. Not only are the stores and inventory they search changing almost daily, so are the rules that govern their shopping expeditions. Some are designed to help shoppers who have no idea what they want to buy. They tend to offer editorial reviews and analyze product features. Others are aimed at people who already know what they want, but haven't decided where to buy it.
Amazon.com
The Seattle-based retailer, which does direct sales of books, music and videos, launched a shopping referral service Dec. 8. It allows you to search 50 participating Web retailers in five categories. You can sort by merchant name, manufacturer name, price or product category.
BottomDollar.com
A shopping search engine focused on consumers who already know what they want to buy and are interested in comparing prices.
Buy.com
This discount Internet store isn't really a Web search service; it's a retailer that aims to offer the lowest prices. It owns the Web addresses for www.buyvideos.com; www.buygames.com; www.buymusic.com. With more than 2,000 registered Web addresses, this company aims to be buyeverything.com and is embarked on a grand expansion plan.
Compare.Net
This ambitious service allows consumers to make side-by-side product comparisons and conduct in-depth research in many categories. It has an editorial staff of two dozen people who write and edit product reviews. It covers thousands of products in 80 categories. Compare.net is less focused on price than many shopping agents, but does make referring links to retailers when consumers are ready to buy.
Excite
Excite's Shopping channel offers various ways to shop. You can browse by store name or category. Click on "Product Finder" to use Excite's price-comparison agent, powered by Jango. It searches the inventories of several hundred participating merchants.
Inktomi's C2B
The C2B shopping agent is one of the more ambitious but remains in the early stages of development. It is designed to be licensed to big Web sites. Previews can be seen on Geocities and on LookSmart.
MySimon
MySimon claims to be the most comprehensive of the comparison-shoppers. Its agents search more than 800 online retailers, with about 50 more being added every week. MySimon doesn't charge merchants fees to be included, which is how it manages to list so many online stores.
StoreRunner
A new one launched in December, StoreRunner has many of the same features as the other bots, but it appears to have a smaller group of merchants than many of the popular shopping agents.
Yahoo
Yahoo has a new Shopping channel similar to Excite's where you can window-shop by category. It includes more than 2,000 merchants in its search service, including many that have opened shop directly on Yahoo by using the Web guide's store-building tools. After you've searched Yahoo's stores, you can click "Search the Web" and find merchandise at more than 1,000 Web retail partners. The giant Web guide also has an older shopping service powered by Junglee that was created before Amazon bought Junglee.
