Etao Product Search Engine: Some E-Commerce Sites Embrace It, Some Block It

Etao is the product search engine that was created by Alibaba Group, China’s biggest e-commerce company. But its origins are cause for reticence among some e-commerce sites. On Tuesday, we reported that 360buy has blocked Etao from crawling and indexing its site. And now the High Street retailer turned e-commerce newcomer Suning (SHE:002024) has followed suit. Suning’s online store now also blocks Etao’s spiders from cataloging the site (pictured above).

In contrast, both Amazon China (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Gome (HKG:0493), which is a High Street electronics rival to Suning, are backing Etao.com. Earlier today, at an event for Amazon’s rebranding in China, the regional president, Wang Han-hua, reaffirmed his belief in the usefulness of Alibaba’s product, and said he will not join in with blocking Etao’s web spiders.

Gome has gone further and signed up to Etao’s third-party login platform which will allow people to login to Gome’s site using their Taobao accounts and then purchase the products using Alipay. The Gome agreement for online payments also covers the retailers sister site Coo8.com.

At the moment, the number of e-commerce sites that allow Etao to index their products – or have also signed up for Taobao-Alipay payments, such as Nike China, Vancl, and YihaoDian – far outweigh the two who have so far blocked the search engine.

But it’s interesting to see some strategic maneuvering in this sector. Although there are theoretically only benefits that come from being included in Etao.com – which Alibaba says is agnostic, and has no favourites – some dissenting voices are emerging. Suning and 360Buy apparently take such a differing view, and perhaps would like to weaken Alibaba’s product search engine in its infancy before it gets too powerful.

[Hat-tip: iFeng tech news]