11–20 of 291 posts
This bot is simply trying to get the final price (with tax and shipping) which is ridiculous because e-commerce storefronts should do that in the first place without going through the whole checkout process. I always have found that kind of shady but it's probably known to increase conversions. What I found interesting is that this an open attack vector for e-commerces. Multiple bots can hit a website and start addin…
> The purpose: making sure the all-in price for the product, including tax and shipping, matches the listing on its Google Shopping platform or in advertisements. It wasn’t to cause angst to merchants due to thousands of abandoned carts.
> “We use automated systems to ensure consumers are getting accurate pricing information from our merchants,” a company spokesman said. “This sometimes leads to merchants seeing abandoned carts as a result of our system testing whether the price displayed matches the price at checkout.”
You'd think they could have better identified themselves in accounts they were creating rather than creating this mysterious "John Smith" persona. Maybe "GoogleBot PriceVerifier" would have been a better choice.
edit: remove my inaccurate confusion about something, and fix quotes that I'd copied from a plagiarized version of the article.
This bot is simply trying to get the final price (with tax and shipping) which is ridiculous because e-commerce storefronts should do that in the first place without going through the whole checkout process. I always have found that kind of shady but it's probably known to increase conversions. What I found interesting is that this an open attack vector for e-commerces. Multiple bots can hit a website and start addin…
Yes but how would you verify this or hold them accountable?
This bot is simply trying to get the final price (with tax and shipping) which is ridiculous because e-commerce storefronts should do that in the first place without going through the whole checkout process. I always have found that kind of shady but it's probably known to increase conversions. What I found interesting is that this an open attack vector for e-commerces. Multiple bots can hit a website and start addin…
It's usually not possible because you don't know how much the shipping + taxes are until the customer enters the billing information.
This bot is simply trying to get the final price (with tax and shipping) which is ridiculous because e-commerce storefronts should do that in the first place without going through the whole checkout process. I always have found that kind of shady but it's probably known to increase conversions. What I found interesting is that this an open attack vector for e-commerces. Multiple bots can hit a website and start addin…
This bot is simply trying to get the final price (with tax and shipping) which is ridiculous because e-commerce storefronts should do that in the first place without going through the whole checkout process. I always have found that kind of shady but it's probably known to increase conversions. What I found interesting is that this an open attack vector for e-commerces. Multiple bots can hit a website and start addin…
> This bot is simply trying to get the final price (with tax and shipping) which is ridiculous because e-commerce storefronts should do that in the first place without going through the whole checkout process. It's usually not possible because you don't know how much the shipping + taxes are until the customer enters the billing information.
Any good UX designer can come up with a solution for this in a couple of hours or less. There's just no motivation to make it happen because this obfuscation of data is particularly optimized and useful for the sellers.
This bot is simply trying to get the final price (with tax and shipping) which is ridiculous because e-commerce storefronts should do that in the first place without going through the whole checkout process. I always have found that kind of shady but it's probably known to increase conversions. What I found interesting is that this an open attack vector for e-commerces. Multiple bots can hit a website and start addin…
Makes you wonder whether the smart thing to do is just make it convenient for the bots to get the info out so they won't ruin your data and waste your bandwidth. Can't fight them, join them. Can't really stop free information flow.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Makes you wonder whether the smart thing to do is just make it convenient for the bots to get the info out so they won't ruin your data and waste your bandwidth. Can't fight them, join them. Can't really stop free information flow.
Or quietly detect the bots and feed them junk data after they've gone through the hoops. Not saying it's the better option, but knowing the business maybe the more likely one.
> When The Wall Street Journal contacted Google in June, a spokesman at the internet giant, after a few days of digging, provided an update: The mystery shopper is a bot of its own creation. > The purpose: making sure the all-in price for the product, including tax and shipping, matches the listing on its Google Shopping platform or in advertisements. It wasn’t to cause angst to merchants due to thousands of abandone…