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Show HN: I scraped 25M Shopify products to build a search engine

searchagora.com

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Re: Show HN: I scraped 25M Shopify products to build a search engine

#141

Post by MuffinFlavored »

senecaso wrote: post #136
bytearray wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What strategies did you consider or implement to attract more users, and what would you do differently now to ensure better user acquisition?

We had no capital, so advertising or solutions that basically involved "throwing money at the problem" were off the table for us. We spent time posting in forums helping people find items they were looking for, and we had a few posts here on HN that generated short-lived, explosive traffic bursts. I remember those days we had posts get picked up on HN, it was always an exciting night! We were looking at influencers a…

> We spent time posting in forums helping people find items they were looking for,

Did you run any analytics on how much overlap there was across Shopify sites on "similar items" (Alibaba resellers/dropshippers)?

Re: Show HN: I scraped 25M Shopify products to build a search engine

#142

Post by senecaso »

pitched wrote: post #118

Shopify has tried a few times to build a tool like this but hasn’t ever managed to get any traction. I think that missing any curation at all could be what eventually kills it. Their current attempt is https://shop.app and a query for red shoes is mostly red shoes.

Ya, curation is sadly required in the Shopify ecosystem. There are millions of shops, there is a tonne of garbage. Its also difficult (but not impossible) to properly classify items so that you can better target results for a given query. One of the first problems that anyone attempting this will run into is the amount of mature content available on Shopify shops. Innocent queries turn up many NSFW images that may offend some users, so you have to be able to get on top of that one pretty quick.

I remember in once case, I found what appeared to be an escort service listing "models" on Shopify. It was super creepy. I needed to get in front of that one pretty quick as well, as it was turning up in results.

Re: Show HN: I scraped 25M Shopify products to build a search engine

#143

Post by senecaso »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #141
senecaso wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had no capital, so advertising or solutions that basically involved "throwing money at the problem" were off the table for us. We spent time posting in forums helping people find items they were looking for, and we had a few posts here on HN that generated short-lived, explosive traffic bursts. I remember those days we had posts get picked up on HN, it was always an exciting night! We were looking at influencers a…

> We spent time posting in forums helping people find items they were looking for, Did you run any analytics on how much overlap there was across Shopify sites on "similar items" (Alibaba resellers/dropshippers)?

we didn't, no, but we spent a lot of time sifting through our catalog, and there was a _tremendous_ amount of crap in there. We manually curated and purged shops that were obviously just dropshipping or looked like out-right scams.

Re: Show HN: I scraped 25M Shopify products to build a search engine

#144

Post by owlninja »

hipadev23 wrote: post #4

https://www.searchagora.com/search?query=red%20shoes It doesn’t work very well.

I see some Red Wing shoe products first, then some bearings, some shoes, then someone in lingerie with red heels, and then more red shoes. I know Google is the horse to beat right now but they showed me nothing but red shoes to buy plus a few ancillary results for such a generic search - and if I was a good husband I would add a few words to narrow my search.

Re: Show HN: I scraped 25M Shopify products to build a search engine

#146

Post by pencildiver »

freefruit wrote: post #145

Could you make it so, that I can easily open a product in a new tab. I like to compare lots of products at the same time.

Absolutely. Currently on the search results page, you can click on the title / price area to open the product URL in a new tab. Open to any suggestions as well. So the product URL is accessible from the search results page or if you click on the product image to open the product listing and click on 'visit product'. Let me know if that makes sense and if you have any suggestions to make it better!

Re: Show HN: I scraped 25M Shopify products to build a search engine

#147

Post by cmcconomy »

boringg wrote: post #95
cmcconomy wrote: post #5

That's funny, I made a domain-specific version of this for canadian coffee deals. https://beangrid.mcconomy.org/

Which coffee seems to hit the best in Canada (your take). I find the espresso in Canada hasn't been as good as the coffee brands in the US but I'm open to possibilities. Also like the project!

I enjoy Café St-Henri's Godshot when I can get it at a discount. Anything from Stereo is great, and I've enjoyed Monogram and De Mello. If I was buying at regular price, I would often get Social Coffee.

Of course I put this together because Black Friday is when I load up on (relatively) cheap coffee and chuck it in the freezer, so this time of year I always branch out and try new places and new offerings from familiar places. I built this list mostly from a reddit compilation I found, and I've been slowly updating the source url list as I learn of new canadian roasters that happen to be Shopify customers.

Re: Show HN: I scraped 25M Shopify products to build a search engine

#150

Post by slim »

senecaso wrote: post #136
bytearray wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What strategies did you consider or implement to attract more users, and what would you do differently now to ensure better user acquisition?

We had no capital, so advertising or solutions that basically involved "throwing money at the problem" were off the table for us. We spent time posting in forums helping people find items they were looking for, and we had a few posts here on HN that generated short-lived, explosive traffic bursts. I remember those days we had posts get picked up on HN, it was always an exciting night! We were looking at influencers a…

looks like simptoms of no market. maybe you were solving a problem already solved by amazon ? most shops on shopify also use amazon
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