A Google bot scrapes pricing info by adding items to carts

Post by Alupis » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 10:06 PM UTC

Felk wrote: post #136

Alupis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cut it off, you get penalized in Google Merchant Tools, and possibly have your product feed suppressed, which will dramatically impact your search visibility for both text and product searches. It can also impact your Google Ads if you link that with your product feed, and more. So, effectively, no you cannot cut this bot off. To make it worse, the bot doesn't always follow the same pattern. Sometimes slightly…

It sounds like you interpreted malux85 suggestion as cutting the bot off from putting things in the cart altogether. What I understood is that, given it's recognizable by user agent, those carts can be marked as created by a bot to exclude it from statistics and reminder mails only.

Post by pgbi » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

Youden wrote: post #135

When and why did news cease being news and start being short stories and opinion? This entire article could have been cut down to the last few paragraphs and nothing of value would have been lost. Look at The New York Times in 1921 [0]. Generally the stories are factual and to the point. The entire front page seems to be pure news. There's very little storytelling here, at most there are a few timelines of events. Lo…

Post by alasdair_ » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

whoisjuan wrote: post #8

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…

Post by kulahan » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 10:11 PM UTC

pgbi wrote: post #143

Youden wrote: post #135

When and why did news cease being news and start being short stories and opinion? This entire article could have been cut down to the last few paragraphs and nothing of value would have been lost. Look at The New York Times in 1921 [0]. Generally the stories are factual and to the point. The entire front page seems to be pure news. There's very little storytelling here, at most there are a few timelines of events. Lo…

Because pure news are pretty much free today. So newspaper need to provide something else: analysis, opinions, etc. to be able to sell something.

Post by zoomablemind » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 10:13 PM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #105

chrisan wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that change by having the bot add items to the cart? You haven't solved anything You are still left with the same scenario as if the store listed the individual shipping price on the front page Google isn't going to know what other items you _might_ add to show you a "real" shipping cost

I’d assume parent’s point is regarding the “which is ridiculous because e-commerce storefronts should do that in the first place without going through the whole checkout process.” part. There’s a lot of legitimate case were showing shipping price upfront is just not doable or valuable to the customer. BTW there are a surprising amount of shops for specialized goods that won’t even list the final price at the end. The…