Consumer electronics search engine Retrevo raises $3.2M

Updated

Retrevo, the search engine for consumer electronics products, has raised $3.2 million more in venture capital — timing the news to generate buzz ahead the CES consumer electronics conference in Las Vegas next week.

The Sunnyvale company, which we first wrote about here, lets you research products before buying them, and and then gives you tips about use afterward. It launched last fall, and chief exec Vipin Jain tells VentureBeat the search engine has had “hundreds of thousands” of users, with searches doubling every several weeks — though he wouldn’t be more specific. The round was led by Silicon Valley’s Norwest Venture Partners, and follows a seed round of less than $1 million last year from Alloy Ventures.

It is just the latest in a bunch of comparison shopping sites, including newbies like Thefind.com and Become.com, and incumbents Shopping.com, Nextag and Pricegrabber — but trying to offer its own twist.

Update: Neglected to mention Fixya, another consumer electronics search engine which is more similar to Retrevo than any of the others listed above, focused on technical support, user guides, and repair leads. It is an Israeli company, seed funded by Yossi Vardi, and founded by Yaniv Bensadon. It is about to get funded by a Silicon Valley firm, we’ve heard.