Shopping portals are gateways to storefronts and e-malls. Like any other portal, they can be comprehensive or niche oriented. Comprehensive, or general-purpose, portals have links to many different sellers and present and evaluate a broad range of products. An example of a comprehensive portal is Ecost.com (ecost.com). Several public portals also offer shopping opportunities and comparison aids. Examples are shopping. corn, shopping. yahoo. com, shopping.rnsn.com, and shopping.aol.com, eBay is a shopping portal because it offers shopping at fixed prices as well as auctions. These all have clear shopping links from the main page of the porta, and they generate revenues by directing consumers to their affiliates' sites. Some of these portals even offer comparison tools to help identify the best price for a particular item. Several of these evaluation companies have purchased shopbots (see the following discussion) or other, smaller shopping aids and incorporated them into their portals.