Pricegrabber costs

Pricegrabber just sent out an email announcing the traditional-for-comparison-engines seasonal price rise. They're raising click costs 25% in the holiday season. My favorite part of the email? "Please note this adjustment will take place on November 1st without any required action on your behalf." Good to know they'll make it as easy as possible.

Washington Post shopping site

The Washington Post has launched a new shopping site. CSE strategies has a review that gives it kudos for blending commerce and content. The two most interesting features are a "window shopping" feature that lets you scroll through the offerings of what appear to be local merchants. And, the local blog on shopping is buried beneath the fold.
There's a variety of interesting content; built around their partnership with Become.com. They seem a bit constrained by the WP.com design, which mandates a big ad across the top, then there menu, and another ad on the right. The site design is also unnecessarily narrow, so everything feels crammed together.
Overall, I'd rate it a good start, in significant need of some visual cohesion.

Kelkoo - changes in shopping engine business model

There was a good article by Scott at Comparison Shopping Engine Stratgies, pointing out some changes at Kelkoo. I'd encourage a read of the whole thing, but this is the line that stood out, and summarizes the major issue many merchants have:
The business model relies on getting traffic in as cheaply as possible and converting as many as possible to merchants who pay high CPC’s. There’s a big push back from merchants who want to ensure high quality converting traffic and so go back to CPA style deals

Comparison Engines: Quality Score Impacts

PPC Super Affiliate has a great post on changes to Google's Quality Score ranks. The key phrase from Google:
The following types of websites are likely to merit low landing page quality scores and may be difficult to advertise affordably. In addition, it’s important for advertisers of these types of websites to adhere to our landing page quality guidelines regarding unique content.

* eBook sites that show frequent ads or install malware
* ‘Get rich quick’ sites
* Comparison shopping sites

This is a very interesting development, going into Q4 when the comparison engines typically raise their rates...Will they be able to get the traffic they need? I'll be curious to hear what Brian Smith or Scott Wingo have to say.
Amit has a take from the affiliates perspective.