41–50 of 291 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They need to be non traceable. If I'm doing something underhanded with pricing information I want to detect Google and other such bots and give them different information.
You really think it's wise to lie to your customers?
I mean their normal web crawler identifies itself as such. Here, I feel like they're committing (very) minor fraud by putting in fake shopper information and actively hiding their identity. Not a big deal if it were just some Joe Schmoe somewhere, but at their scale might it border on harassment? The robot equivalent of a prank call?
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…
So, yes, you can estimate shipping for a single item but you can't always present the per-item shipping charge as it depends on the context of the whole order.
> 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…
Now even the WSJ has clickbait titles. Should have been "Google price-checking system annoying merchants".
* Baseball Stadiums Are Closed to Fans - but This Guy's Balcony Is Open for Business
* Americans Craving Contact Ponder New Rules for Throwing a Party in Real Life
* When Your Best Friend in Quarantine Is a Squirrel, You May Be Going Nuts
* Beware of Falling Tofu: China Takes on High-Altitude Littering
* Did You Forget Things During Lockdown? So Did People With Superior Memories
In that context I don't have a problem with the title "Who Is the Mystery Shopper Leaving Behind Thousands of Online Shopping Carts?".
Google. Saved you a click.
Thanks. “A Google bot scrapes pricing info by adding items to carts” could have replaced that whole fairy tale that they wanted us to pay for.
I kind of liked the mystery shopper angle, but since there's more than one complaint in the thread, the guidelines win ("Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait")
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…
Now even the WSJ has clickbait titles. Should have been "Google price-checking system annoying merchants".
This is an A Hed, one of the Wall Street Journal's daily funny news stories on the front page. Other recent ones include: * Baseball Stadiums Are Closed to Fans - but This Guy's Balcony Is Open for Business * Americans Craving Contact Ponder New Rules for Throwing a Party in Real Life * When Your Best Friend in Quarantine Is a Squirrel, You May Be Going Nuts * Beware of Falling Tofu: China Takes on High-Altitude Litt…
That sparked a funny idea in my head, what if we tricked product managers industry wide to follow KPIs and A/B tests that resulted in a better user experience for consumers, instead of experiences that coincidentally slightly upticked "engagement". Because it seems like this mystery shopper is already doing that.
That sparked a funny idea in my head, what if we tricked product managers industry wide to follow KPIs and A/B tests that resulted in a better user experience for consumers, instead of experiences that coincidentally slightly upticked "engagement". Because it seems like this mystery shopper is already doing that.