
Show HN: Price changes alerts for any store - adibalcan
http://app.thepriceminer.com/
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prawn
Provide a link or two as examples so people can quickly try it out. Make it
clickable rather than something they have to copy and paste. Maybe have a grid
of popular products for this. This allows people to try your service and also
gives them ideas of the types of products they might track.

I could see something like this being a really quick way to get alerts when a
competitor changes their price. Not sure if there would be legal issues in
promoting this though.

In the text here ("Enter your email in the field above for future price
notifications"), the field is below, not above. At least, it is in my browser.

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adibalcan
Good idea! We will change as soon as possible.

~~~
adibalcan
Done

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Egidius
Alternative: [https://pricep.in/](https://pricep.in/)

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vjandrea
Why the currency isn't specified? I'm looking for an item on Amazon France and
the price should be dispayed in euros, not in USD.

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adibalcan
We get the correct price but we strip currency (for numerical comparison)

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blawson
Another one I wrote for my friends and I a while back:

[https://salesniper.com](https://salesniper.com)

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coldshower
That's a great domain name. Did you register it or have to buy it from
someone?

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adibalcan
we have registered it

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swalsh
This is a really great way to mine data. Seriously as an eCommerce store i'd
pay for access to this data.

Let me send you a product feed, and let me know any time a customer requests
something from it (on my site or someone elses) I'll send them a deal email.

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adibalcan
Please use this form to contact us:
[https://thewebminer.com/contact](https://thewebminer.com/contact)

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zlagen
Here's an alternative for heuristic extraction which appears to handle more
complex data: [https://www.diffbot.com/](https://www.diffbot.com/)

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denzil_correa
Is this market specific? I tried this product [0] and it tells me the product
has a price of 32 rather tahn 13,999/-.

[0]
[http://www.amazon.in/dp/B01DDP7GZK/ref=br_imp?pf_rd_m=A1VBAL...](http://www.amazon.in/dp/B01DDP7GZK/ref=br_imp?pf_rd_m=A1VBAL9TL5WCBF&pf_rd_s=desktop-
hero-
kindle-B&pf_rd_r=18WNMTESDDCTV158D3M6&pf_rd_t=Gateway&pf_rd_p=3e319d1c-cef1-40e0-9012-d5f18f0542be&pf_rd_i=desktop)

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adibalcan
It's heuristic

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kkotak
These can be shutdown very easily by the sites if they want to.

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JustSomeNobody
Why yes they can. But, is it in their best interest to devote much resources
to the endeavor?

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the_unknown
Could be. If they don't want to compete solely based on price. Or don't
believe that price is their strong point.

There are many reasons to compete on price but just as many reasons to _not_
compete on price including service, support, delivery charges, home delivery
options, shopping local. Or simply not wanting to support a race-to-the-bottom
Walmart world.

Yes, forcing retailers to be part of your system is great for your business
model but that doesn't equate to necessarily be good for theirs. And since
they may never know that you even exist (if a customer doesn't visit because
of your site how will they know?) they may be losing traffic without even
knowing why.

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pravda
Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your
request. Either the server is overloaded or there is an error in the
application.

~~~
adibalcan
the server is overloaded. We will fix soon

~~~
adibalcan
now works :)

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mtgx
Couldn't this work as a browser extension instead?

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dtsn
Alternative for the UK [http://pricehare.com](http://pricehare.com)

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tmaly
You might want to update your version of Nginx and add some caching I am
getting a 504

nginx/1.4.6 (Ubuntu)

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adibalcan
Thanks for feedback, we will fix this

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rgx10
Gives a server error when clicking go and no link is entered

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rgx10
Gives internal server error when clicked go without a link

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adibalcan
Try now ;)

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irrational
So, it's like camelcamelcamel, but for more sites?

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adibalcan
We have to many visitors from HN

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6DM
Just curious, what kind of traffic levels are you seeing from HN. Just in case
any of us want to do a load test to validate our own sites can handle it.

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jastr
Top 5 on HN for ~3 hrs peaked around 1,500 views per hour

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throwawayReply
That doesn't sound like a lot, that's a hit every couple of seconds.

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6DM
It depends on how complicated your website is, in some cases what technology
you're using in combination with the size of your server you're renting, and
if it's 1,500 in the first second or 25 a second. Either way, load tests for
your site would be good for you.

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adibalcan
This is based on an unique technology which detect price on product pages on
various stores

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forvelin
How it is different than pricep.in ?

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speg
Well, the first page[1] I tested it on worked fine, whereas pricep.in seemed
to fail. Also, I didn't need to create an account or install an extension.

[1] [https://www.lowes.ca/routers/dewalt-dwp611pk-125-hp-
variable...](https://www.lowes.ca/routers/dewalt-dwp611pk-125-hp-variable-
speed-corded-compact-router-combo-kit_g1334100.html)

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MartijnHoutman
It seems your product page no longer works, so of course it fails ;)

Our tools (apps and browser extensions) have a 'report' button, so whenever
someone encounters an issue, we get notified and we will add it to our 'to
fix' list :)

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speg
I added them both at the same time, and the page is still working now.

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adibalcan
Please give us feedback

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malcolmhere
I worked on a product like this for a long while, so I can appreciate how hard
the problem is you are trying to solve. Some things I realized along the way:

* Price capture needs to happen in a headless browser (e.g. PhantomJS), rather than just capturing the HTML with a GET. Too many sites use JavaScript to make raw HTML analysis feasible.

* You can get > 50% of the pricing information with fairly simple matching on the class/id value in the HTML tag. But you need a headless browser to make sure the tag is visible. And since most product pages contain multiple prices, you need some heuristic to determine the relevant price. Oh, and watch of out for "reduced from" prices too (e.g. "Old Price: $50, New Price: $35".

* It doesn't hurt to be able to override the general heuristic on a domain-by-domain basis, saved me a lot of headaches.

* You need to be honest with yourself about how reliable the price capture algorithm is, and built up a regression database of known good pages, so when you change the algorithm, nothing else breaks. Also, you need to keep ahead of site redesigns!

* Product URLs tend to look messy, but tend not to change very often, if at all. I was worried about retailers e.g. changing product identifiers, but changing URLs hurts their SEO, so they don't do it. You will find "zombie" products, though - things which appear to be still on sale, but aren't linked anywhere on the site. Deciding when a product is sold out is tricky.

* The best user experience presents the items the user is watching as a "shopping basket". (I took design cues from Pinterest.) For a really slick experience, you should pick out the product name and image (Facebook meta-data helps here) and include them in you "pinned" products.

* Cutting-and-pasting URLs is a hassle. Consider writing a browser extension or a bookmarklet - users don't like to have the browsing flow interrupted by having to click across tabs. Having the price capture done inline on the page really impresses people.

Best of luck with this! I'm yet to see someone solve this problem well, and I
eventually moved on other things after losing a lot of my hair. :-)

~~~
adibalcan
Really interesting feedback. Thanks!

