With shopping comparison sites such as Google Product Search and Bing Cashback getting a lot of attention these days, Amazon.com may be preparing its own comparison feature. The ecommerce giant recently applied for a trademark for the term "1-Click Compare" providing "a comparison tool to allow the features of different products and services to be evaluated."

Will Amazon limit product comparison to items on its own website? Or will it go broader than that — with product listings from rival retailers?

Amazon already works with other retailers in some ways. It opens up its website to third-party sellers, sells product ads on Amazon, and offers Checkout by Amazon payment technology. But it hasn't provided side-by-side comparisons of its own products and those of competing ecommerce sites.

Amazon could potentially drive adoption of Checkout by Amazon by including sites that use the service in a product comparison tool.

There's already a group of well-established shopping comparison websites out there, including NexTag, Shopzilla and PriceGrabber. Now Google Product Search and Bing Cashback are making a mark, which may have caught Amazon's attention.

"Google Product Search is generating as much transaction volume as Amazon, dollar per dollar, for many of our clients," said Eric Best, CEO of Seattle-based Mercent Corp., a company that helps brands such as Car Toys, Guess, and The Body Shop sell and market products online (Best is also a veteran of Amazon.com).

Here's the full description of "1-Click Compare" from Amazon's Oct. 9 trademark filing:

Computer services, namely, providing comparison information for a wide variety of products based on product characteristics; providing an on-line computer database in the field of locating products, describing products, and comparing products based on defined product characteristics; providing a comparison tool to allow the features of different products and services to be evaluated

Follow my updates on Twitter.