People are going to spend more money online than they did last year. An 18% percent increase in sales over last year. That translates into big sales for online retailers.

That number is incredible. Online stores that can offer, excellent prices, superior shipping, brand name awareness are going to cash in.

The big search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN sent 25 percent more visits to leading shopping comparison sites The week of October 23, 2006, compared to the same period in 2005.

As an online merchant it is absolutely critical to get listed in the comparison shopping engines.

Those engines as compiled by Search Engine Watch include.

BizRate

http://www.bizrate.com/

BizRate allows you to search for products from hundreds of online vendors. Features include merchant ratings, reviews, tax and shipping information, as well as a list of your own most searches and recently viewed products. Also powers some of the results provided by Lycos Shopping.

DealTime

http://www.dealtime.com

One of the major comparison shopping search engines on the web that integrates product reviews from Epinions, which it acquired in May 2003. Also owns Shopping.com, which essentially is a clean-search version of DealTime.

Froogle

http://www.froogle.com

Comparison shopping search engine from Google. Gathers listings from crawling the web and accepting product feeds vendors.

Kelkoo

http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/

Major comparison shopping search engine for the United Kingdom and other European countries. According to the company, 16 out of the top 20 e-commerce sites in the UK are currently advertising through Kelkoo. Advertisers have the opportunity to reach customers in all nine European countries in which Kelkoo operates. (see links at bottom of the Kelkoo home page).

MSN Shopping

http://shopping.msn.com/

MSN Shopping, formerly known as eShop, offers Buyer's Guides with tips and tools, editor suggestions, and other features beyond the price comparisons offered by other shopping search sites.

mySimon

http://www.mysimon.com/

One of oldest comparison shopping sites on the Web, featuring the ability to search for products from thousands of merchants or browse by product category.

NexTag

http://www.nextag.com/

Comparison shopping search engine with "TruePrices" feature that shows prices including tax and shipping charges, as well as user ratings.

PriceGrabber.com

http://www.pricegrabber.com/

Comparison shopping search engine with ability to see member ratings of products. Available in English or Spanish, including specialized product searches for retailers in Mexico and Brazil.

Yahoo Shopping

http://shopping.yahoo.com/

Yahoo Shopping connects you with thousands of merchants -- traditional retail stores, name-brand catalog companies, small boutiques, and specialty vendors. Listings come from merchants hosted in Yahoo Store and through partnerships with others, in addition to online merchants throughout the web. Provides access to user reviews, as well.

As an online merchant it is imperative that you study these online comparison sites so that your products can be properly delivered to comparison site users.

These sites most often require complete text files or automated feeds of your product lines. Compiling these files can be tedious. You may want to consult a service that handles the product feeds for you. If you are a do it yourselfer there are several software programs that automate the feed building process.

Be prepared to resubmit your product line at least once every 30 days so your products stay in the comparison sites.

Your online advertising budget should be spent on comparison shopping sites because the sites give you direct access to shoppers looking specifically for your product.