NexTag buys Wize to upsize review quantity

Comparison shopping site acquires product recommendation search engine for undisclosed amount

Comparison shopping site NexTag has acquired Wize, a product recommendation research engine. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed.

Wize is a simple but powerful service that lets shop-savvy customers search for reviews of products--everything from consumer electronics to baby strollers--before making a final decision on purchases. The site has so far aggregated over six million product reviews on over a million products from thousands of sources, like Amazon.com, Walmart.com, and CNET.

As part of the deal, Wize will retain its offices, employees, and management team in Burlingame, CA. Tom Patterson, President and CEO of Wize, will report directly to Scott Simmons, President of NexTag.

Wize's first and only big funding was a $4 million Series A round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and the Mayfield Fund in early 2007, just a few months after its 2006 founding. In 2008, the startup picked up an additional $988K from the Mayfield Fund.

Though Wize does not get paid for recommending products, the service sometimes earns a transaction fee when users click through to read an entire review on a merchant's site and end up purchasing the product.

We spoke with Patterson to seek out specifics as to how Wize will be integrated with NexTag, but details are scant at the moment.

"Wize.com will continue to build momentum as a defining product recommendation site for Nextag," said the CEO via email. "Wize.com technology and product recommendations will be integrated into Nextag in the near future."

Basically, the biggest result of the acquisition will be the merging of Wize's massive database of reviews into NexTag's price comparison service. NexTag is also sure to implement the algorithms Wize employs to aggregate reviews across the Web.

The acquisition of Wize is "one of a series of strategic initiatives" to boost the influence of NexTag in the online shopping sector.