A new website has just launched that might make your bargain hunting life a little easier, my dear readers. CouponLooker is a search engine that brings coupons from multiple sources at your fingerprints.
This is a very timely offering. I have reviewed websites aggregating deals in the past here and here but this is the first time I write about aggregating coupons. My monthly list of coupon sites keeps growing and for someone to launch a search engine like this was just a matter of time.
The site has been brought to life by the folks from JudysBook who seem to dip their toes into deals/coupons niche ever deeper each time I come to visit their place. The last update added local mapping feature which lets you see those deals marked on your local area map. Check it out.
Affiliate or not?
CouponLooker seems to be a step aside from that road to the fairyland of affiliate marketing which didn’t start very smoothly for JudysBook.
We tried to get a broad base of coupon sites into our indexes to provide useful results to consumers. Long term we’d like to be comprehensive.
This was from Rahul Pathak, the VP of Product Development at Judy’s Book. The search engine seems to follow the business model used by Google and Yahoo who generate revenue via sponsored results and context ads. You can already see ads on the right side bar of the search results page. I am yet to find a sponsored result though.
I have been using the tool for some time now and the impression is very positive so far. The website is very cleanly designed. The search results are arranged by the partner advertising the coupon. Some results can be further expanded into sub results if multiple offers are detected from the same partner. More often than not you can see the coupon expiration date and/or other details within the results.
Where is my coupon?
The only big problem I see with the tool is that after clicking through the link I get to the partner page with tens or hundreds of coupons and my particular coupon is not highlighted or marked in any way. This is not very convenient since I then have to look around that page searching for what I need.
Another interesting feature offered by CouponLooker team is a blog widget. I have embedded one in this post for you to see. You can search for coupons from the widget itself but you will have to go to the main site to get details on those coupons after you click on the results in the widget. Is that extra click really necessary? I guess this is just an effort, and a rather lousy one, to get you to visit the main site more often.
Conclusion
This is a very interesting idea and a useful search engine. I am really impressed. As long as the team stays independent and open regarding how results are ordered and what sources are crawled, I am going to recommend it to anyone as a great time and money saving tool. What is your opinion?
Yan,
Thanks for checking couponlooker out and for the kind words and feedback in your review.
Our goal is to be clear and transparent about the search results that appear when users look for coupons and to monetize via contextual placements similar to Google and Yahoo. Order within search results is based on relevance and user value and nothing else. I don’t think you can claim to have a search engine without delivering on that fundamental promise.
Regarding the widget link clicks going to couponlooker rather than to coupon sites, we do believe that the more comprehensive results deliver value on couponlooker. If we hear enough from users that it’s a pain in the ass, we’ll change it.
In the long run, the only way to win is to deliver value to users. That’s not always an easy road, but it’s always worth walking.
Thanks again for the feedback and for a great blog in general.
Cheers,
Rahul
PS: If any of you have suggestions about how we can make couponlooker or judysbook better, please let us know. I’d love to hear from you.
First of all I must say that I like your posts. They are highly relevant and they show that you spent a lot of time for research.
The reason for this comment is that I have a question, which is not connected with the title of this post since you deactivated comments for your earlier posts (on the issues about price comparison engines).
So let’s go straight to the point. I want to know if there is any possibility to incorporate price comparison table, chart or whatever on my site from one of the price comparison engines (of course with their permission, affiliate or not).
I was doing a research myself but I thought that if I ask you it would be better.
PriceGrabber provides facility for merchants to build co-branded price comparison. Take a look at these for example:
http://fatwallet.pricegrabber.com/
http://slickdeals.pricegrabber.com/
They look exactly like the main sites (FatWallet and SlickDeals) but they are hosted off of the PriceGrabber domain.
This would be the easiest way for you to build your own price comparison. If you are looking at more customization then I would check what API Shopping.com provides.
Bizrate also does the same..
Interesting idea … I bumped into another site based on the exact same concept … search engine to find deals and coupons …
http://couponsearch.googlepages.com/
Using Google Co-op or Rollyo.com is what I immediately thought about when I found CouponLooker. The thing is that you probably need to do some search results post processing to make the tool really useful. Maybe Rahul will comment, why CouponLooker is better than a solution built on top of these services?
Hi All,
Yan, Rob – great question. Google custom search and Rollyo are cool services and do allow you to restrict your search space to specific sites.
At couponlooker, what we’re trying to do is find, rank and dedupe coupons and display information like expiry date & coupon code to save users time and generate traffic to coupon sites.
Because we’re focused on finding coupons rather than websites about coupons, we are confident we can deliver more value than site-restricted custom search.
At the end of the day though, users will do what they always do – vote with their feet.
Rahul