The newest member of the growing comparison shopping family recently unlocked its doors to take advantage of the holiday shopping season.  Pronto.com, a unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp, offers shoppers what it says is the most comprehensive comparison shopping search engine available today.

Pronto's biggest claim to fame is its patent-pending crawl and data-mining technology.  Instead of indexing feeds from paying merchants, like most comparison shopping sites, Pronto uses IAC technology to "scour" the web for every possible location available to purchase products from.  The company's website also says that Pronto.com's search index contains five times as many merchants as other comparison shopping search sites.

The same technology that drives Pronto's product crawler collects product reviews from various sites across the web.  Those reviews are then analyzed and the product is given a score based on the collective reviews of multiple shopping sites.  When you view product descriptions, that score is displayed along with the reviews Pronto has collected from the web.

What sets Pronto apart further is the fact that it can be installed as an Internet Explorer addon or Firefox plugin.  When installed, Pronto will alert you to better deals on products you shop for, regardless of the site you're browsing.  For example, if you are looking at a book on Amazon.com, Pronto will automatically search for a cheaper price while you shop.  If it finds a better deal, a pop-up in the lower corner of the screen will alert you to the location of the better deal.  The plugins are optional.

For advertisers, Pronto offers sponsored search listings that appear above and below search results, much the same as its big brother, Ask.com.  The advertising service requires merchants to bid for results and requires payment only when customers actually visit the merchant's site.

Pronto joins an ever-growing list of specialty search sites that help users look for content within a certain category or segment of the web.

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