Can You Really Trust Those Bots?

By Bernard Baumohl

Faced with what once seemed an unlimited number of e-tail sites, Web surfers have shifted the task of locating the stuff they want to shopping robots--a.k.a. bots--which are software tools that instantly scan hundreds of retail sites to find the lowest price for a given product. Some 4 million shoppers used these bots in October, double the number a year ago. "Shop bots offer a real value to consumers," says Barry Parr, a director with IDC, an online research firm. "They're here to stay."

There are 50 or so bots out there willing to do your bidding. Since they all do the same thing, you would think they would always come up with identical results on who is offering the lowest price. You would be wrong.

There are a number of critical differences among bots, and the way they operate is influenced by their business models. The companies behind the bots want to make money. Since consumers show no interest in paying for the service, the bots must get revenues from selling advertising and from referrals.

And that's where the finagling starts. There are two kinds of bots on the Internet. The first functions within a closed system and works only with retailers that sign up for a fee. These include Shop@AOL and Shopping.Yahoo. But most bots use the open system and search the entire Web. Though these bots may have financial relationships with some retailers, they don't exclude others. The lesson here: bots don't always offer you unbiased information.

Though consumers love to use bots to find a deal, wary merchants see them as agents for profit-busting bidding wars. Some sellers at first erected barriers to prevent these price-foraging bots from getting any information. Not a shrewd move, as online customers simply passed those sellers by. Others outsmarted the bots by listing a very low price and then, as the order was made, zapping the shopper with stiff shipping costs.

The bot/merchant game continues, and bots are becoming more sophisticated. DealTime and Deja, for example, check retail websites not only for prices but also for shipping costs and whether the item is in stock. Whenushop, a newcomer last month, takes the hunt one step further. It unleashes a squad of up to four bots; lets shoppers know if, in addition to the low price, merchants are offering little-publicized discount coupons; and even pays the return postage if shoppers are dissatisfied with the product.

Among the most popular bots is MySimon, which brings in more than 1 million visitors a month, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. It boasts scanning more than 2,500 merchants for values on millions of products. Though MySimon does highlight some merchants in search results, customers can easily use a sort feature to arrange the list solely by price, a feature many other bots don't offer.

Pricescan is less well known but declares that it is totally unbiased. It will not accept payment from merchants to place a product higher on the list. Roboshopper not only lists prices but also mentions the merchant's inventory. Nextag has a novel feature: if you don't like the merchant's price, you can negotiate a better one.

All this too much for you? No problem. Proceed to a website called botspot and read the latest reviews on bots, then choose the one that suits you best. Just remember that sometimes the information as well as the price should be discounted.

--By Bernard Baumohl