Experian buys price comparison site PriceGrabber

PriceGrabber, which is currently a small player in the UK with PriceGrabber.co.uk and offices in London, currently serves around 17m unique visitors via its own branded website and more than 300 third-party branded versions including Ask Jeeves and MSN.

Its information service covers categories including consumer electronics, clothing, office products, and home and garden.

Don Robert, Experian Group CEO, said: "We are very excited about the future growth prospects of combining PriceGrabber.com with Experian's interactive and marketing businesses."

Experian said the acquisition would further extend the range of marketing solutions it provides to multichannel retailers and catalogue companies, while PriceGrabber said that it expects to be able to improve the quality of leads referred to retailers' websites by adding Experian data and analytics.

All 140 PriceGrabber staff, including president Kamram Pourzanjani, will stay on. The company was founded in 1999 and expects to make 2005 profits before interest and tax of $25m (£14.1m) on sales of $60m.

In May this year Experian bought a US financial services comparison website, Lowermybills.com, for $330m.

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This article was first published on brandrepublic.com