The declining economy isn’t pinching everybody. Online retailers are increasingly benefiting from marketing their products on shopping comparison sites as consumers seek bargains, according to research published by E-consultancy and DoubleClick.

Approximately 43% of retailers surveyed say that the proportion of online sales coming through comparison shopping engines (CSEs) has increased in the last 12 months.

Retailers surveyed report 10% of their online sales come through this channel.

Some highlights from the report:

• Retailers rate Google Shopping / Base and Shopping.com as the best comparison shopping engines for volume, with 38% saying that Google is “good” and 35% saying that Shopping.com is “good”. Kelkoo and PriceRunner are both rated as being good for volume by 28% of merchants.
• Google Shopping / Base was also rated by merchants as the best CSE for quality of traffic, and for ease of use.
• Just under a third of companies (29%) surveyed said that they used their own tracking tools to track activity in the CSE channel, compared to around a quarter (24%) who use third-party tools and technology and 11% who use CSE tracking. A third (32%) use a combination of these methods.
• The majority of retailers surveyed manage their CSE feeds in-house, while only 13% use specialist feed optimization companies. The same percentage (13%) use agencies for this purpose.

More details at http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/comparison-shopping-engines-survey-report-2008.