looking for e-commerce price monitoring tool

[gtorres]

Hi, I´m an e-commerce consultant and I´m looking for monitor competitors pricing tools (actually, not just pricing). To be more specific, I´m seeking for a tool or service that could enable my client to collect prices, shipping rates and polices, and other infos from his competitors websites/online stores, and also that deliver reports (punctual e historical analytics and graphics), alerts everytime his prices are higher or much lower than the his competitors average and etc. I would appreciate a lot if anyone who has heard about or used any could recommend me one. Thanks, Guilherme

[bluedreamer]

That's called content scraping, and it's very errr... unethical ;)

A quick web search turned up a few links to read about it...

http://www.out-law.com/page-9092
http://seoblackhat.com/category/scrapers/
http://www.netage.co.za/resources/10-seo-wars-ii-attack-of-the-clones-website-content-scraping-and-duplicate-content
http://www.thefutureoftheweb.com/blog/web-scrape-with-php-tutorial
http://amchamni.org/2009/09/scrape-script.html
http://www.mozenda.com/web-scraping-software

[gtorres]

Hi Blue Dreamer, thanks a lot for your tips and link recommendations, including your alert about the law and "ethic". I see your point, but I believe it apllies in other situations, protected content like pictures, text, reports, research and others. Not to "pricing". I know big companies operating in bricks & mortgage retail that have been providing, since a long time ago, exacly the same service (competitor prices scanning and analysis, in an speciallyzed business area/activity/profession, which is called "pricing". I also know some companies which is already operating and doing the same in e-commerce business. But, again, thanks a lot.

[bluedreamer]

No problem

Yes people still do it to all sorts of content but that doesn't make it any more ethical ;) When you "scrape" a site and you republish it you're effectively using their copyrighted content without permission. It only takes one to launch legal action and you'd be stuffed.... but that's a risk you assess before hand.

[gtorres]

I agee with you. But I´m not trying to find a tool to scrap websites and republish their content. My client is an internet store and he just need a tool to compare the prices of his store to his competitors. But, thanks again.

[edmondscommerce]

I can help here, I do a lot of this kind of thing

As for the ethics, I see no issue here. What do you think Google does to get its search engine content?

Scraping is just automating something that could be done manually, accessing publicly available data.

See my contact details in the signature if you want to discuss further.