Price Comparison Script

[AcornDomains]

Does anyone know of a price comparison script for UK shops?

Thanks

[Chris]

I do not know of a script.

One way to do it though would be to get data feeds from many merchants and write a script that uses them all.

[incka]

It would be hard to compete with the likes of Kelkoo.co.uk... The only way I can think is to outbid there 7p per search affiliate program on TradeDoubler.

Also, as well as using affiliate programs, try to get deals with merchants that do not have affiliate programs such as HMV.co.uk.

I would think it would be to hard to do as a single person, but could be profitable as a 10 person business.

[MarkB]

I think a price comparison site serving a narrow niche, based on datafeeds, *could* be successful. But it'd take a hell of a lot of work to get going and keep updated.

[AcornDomains]

Thanks for your inputs.

Any ideas how this site does it?

http://www.best-dvd-price.co.uk/

[kdb003]

they use 123pricecheck.com

ie http://www.123pricecheck.com/cgi-bin/aws/dvd/display_dvd_comparison.cgi?CODE=B00008W64E

[AcornDomains]

123pricecheck.com is owned by the same person as best-dvd-price.co.uk

[statbat]

Hello AcornDomains,

If you are looking for the script to launch your own price comparison website then go to this company.

www.kaonsoftwares.com/price-comparison-script.html (http://www.kaonsoftwares.com/price-comparison-script.html)

They offer script which have all the tools and gadgets required, they also give links to the websites' of different countries (including UK) which are running on their script.

Cheers!

[Blue Cat Buxton]

Is that your site, perchance?

Or have you used it with success?

[Shawn]

That's an awfully expensive script.

[MarkB]

I might have a bash at developing one later in the year when my schedule is cleared. It'd be an interest experiment in frustration :)

[Chris]

I plan on sorta making one -- it'll run off my existing datafeed database instead of crawling merchant sites so it'll actually be pretty simple. I hope to eventually allow merchants to submit their own feeds, like Froogle, but I'd charge them.

[pricethat]

That's an awfully expensive script.


Hello everyone, my first post so go gentle on me though i did want to make a comment on this subject, especially as we have been working on a price comparison service for the last two years.

Just to offer some people some pointers in that it does seem very simple to start a price comparison service when you look at it. It did to us when we did it, as skiled programmers we thought it would be a doddle, but it isnt. Sure you can bang a few mysql queries together to show feeds from a few merchants feeds but that certainly wont get anyone anywhere.

Before anyone even thinks of starting you really do need to know what your getting into. Two or three months of FULLTIME study would serve you more than trying to find a script that would do anything for you.

To make a price comparison site you need to realise that its a manual task, not an automatic one, you make automatic scripts to try and automise all that manual work you have to do. Even if you just concentrate on a small range such as electronics you will find that most of your time is just editing feeds manually as merchants do not provide data to you in a way that the price comparison site needs to work properly. You can try and specify but i promise you won get anywhere with it.

Two years later and we have have the backends in place for ours which probably is as good or if not better than kelkoo, pricerunner etc in terms of updating speed but that doesnt mean anything, we still need data and affiliate data on its own is NOT enough to run a price comparison site that someone wont laugh at. Pricerunner is probably the technically best of all of them but imagine the costs of trying to attract new customers, you wouldnt believe how much it costs to get sales people working to get the clients and then you have to provide traffic for them as well!!

Its a big task and not something that a simple php script will solve for you, theres no way that some of the php scripts like the ones mentioned above will scale large enough to operate a proper comparison site of any real benefit to the user and any seo effect from so many pages doesnt really work anymore because its already 1000 times duplicated content.

Our updater software just to import data, manage it, auto categorisation, editing etc etc cost us probably 30,000 pounds to develop in total plus my work for the last two years so a $500 script is not an expensive script as someone put it. But its not a full scale script, its a very basic import a feed type script, nothing that will run a full scale site with 8 million products for example and 8 million records at least you will need to run a good price comparison site.

A man called D morrison has created a script called pricetapestry which i think is very good for people that want to get started, php based, not very great for high end, mass data usage but it does give people a starting base to get started with price comparison but like i say, you have to be in for the long haul and dont kid yourself that any script or service will do anything near what you want or need to do to operate such a service.

For us we have done three of what we see as the four steps to a price comparison site

1: Universal data feed importer with 500 point error handling (YES!! 500 errors you will have to learn and find out about) Data handling, auto categorisation, data ruleset manager, character manipulation, find and replace, delete and merge facilities. interface, administrator accounts/admins

2: Advertiser login and reporting services, universal product data services, universal site scraping services to collect feeds for merchants that cant/wont provide them (dont presume big companies can even supply you with a feed to your specifications EVER)

3: Marketing tools, traffic managers to monitor incoming outgoing traffic to make sure purchased traffic is equal or less than the money/sales we are making from our own site for those purchased keywords (most traffic is bought, even kelkoo wouldnt have so many visitors just from seo alone)

Still to do

4: Make the comparison side on the front end of the site, that i imagine could take anything up to a year to make properly when you consider all that has to be done.

Anyway, i dont think i gave anyone any specifics of what you will be up against but i hope this was of some help to those considering what is needed to operate one. Even if you achieve it and make something better than kelkoo, pricerunner, dealtime its of no use to you unless you have a serious stuff of cash in your account to buy traffic to the site. A couple of thousand pounds of ppc money to buy traffic wont get you very far these days.

Hope that was a little food for thought

Regards

[richard_pearson]

Hello everyone, my first post so go gentle on me though i did want to make a comment on this subject, especially as we have been working on a price comparison service for the last two years.

Just to offer some people some pointers in that it does seem very simple to start a price comparison service when you look at it. It did to us when we did it, as skiled programmers we thought it would be a doddle, but it isnt. Sure you can bang a few mysql queries together to show feeds from a few merchants feeds but that certainly wont get anyone anywhere.

Before anyone even thinks of starting you really do need to know what your getting into. Two or three months of FULLTIME study would serve you more than trying to find a script that would do anything for you.

To make a price comparison site you need to realise that its a manual task, not an automatic one, you make automatic scripts to try and automise all that manual work you have to do. Even if you just concentrate on a small range such as electronics you will find that most of your time is just editing feeds manually as merchants do not provide data to you in a way that the price comparison site needs to work properly. You can try and specify but i promise you won get anywhere with it.

Two years later and we have have the backends in place for ours which probably is as good or if not better than kelkoo, pricerunner etc in terms of updating speed but that doesnt mean anything, we still need data and affiliate data on its own is NOT enough to run a price comparison site that someone wont laugh at. Pricerunner is probably the technically best of all of them but imagine the costs of trying to attract new customers, you wouldnt believe how much it costs to get sales people working to get the clients and then you have to provide traffic for them as well!!

Its a big task and not something that a simple php script will solve for you, theres no way that some of the php scripts like the ones mentioned above will scale large enough to operate a proper comparison site of any real benefit to the user and any seo effect from so many pages doesnt really work anymore because its already 1000 times duplicated content.

Our updater software just to import data, manage it, auto categorisation, editing etc etc cost us probably 30,000 pounds to develop in total plus my work for the last two years so a $500 script is not an expensive script as someone put it. But its not a full scale script, its a very basic import a feed type script, nothing that will run a full scale site with 8 million products for example and 8 million records at least you will need to run a good price comparison site.

A man called D morrison has created a script called pricetapestry which i think is very good for people that want to get started, php based, not very great for high end, mass data usage but it does give people a starting base to get started with price comparison but like i say, you have to be in for the long haul and dont kid yourself that any script or service will do anything near what you want or need to do to operate such a service.

For us we have done three of what we see as the four steps to a price comparison site

1: Universal data feed importer with 500 point error handling (YES!! 500 errors you will have to learn and find out about) Data handling, auto categorisation, data ruleset manager, character manipulation, find and replace, delete and merge facilities. interface, administrator accounts/admins

2: Advertiser login and reporting services, universal product data services, universal site scraping services to collect feeds for merchants that cant/wont provide them (dont presume big companies can even supply you with a feed to your specifications EVER)

3: Marketing tools, traffic managers to monitor incoming outgoing traffic to make sure purchased traffic is equal or less than the money/sales we are making from our own site for those purchased keywords (most traffic is bought, even kelkoo wouldnt have so many visitors just from seo alone)

Still to do

4: Make the comparison side on the front end of the site, that i imagine could take anything up to a year to make properly when you consider all that has to be done.

Anyway, i dont think i gave anyone any specifics of what you will be up against but i hope this was of some help to those considering what is needed to operate one. Even if you achieve it and make something better than kelkoo, pricerunner, dealtime its of no use to you unless you have a serious stuff of cash in your account to buy traffic to the site. A couple of thousand pounds of ppc money to buy traffic wont get you very far these days.

Hope that was a little food for thought

Regards

Hi pricethat. I read your post with great interest as I have recently decided to try and create a price comparison site also.

I am litterally at the very begining and I was hoping you might be able to point me in the right direction on a of couple issues.

Primarily I'm interested to know what method you are using to obtain your data. Are you being specifically provided with data by the merchants or you using some sort of crawler to get the data direct from their site?

Secondly, I was wondering how helpfull/unhelpfull the merchants in relation to price comparison services?

Cheers,
Richard

[EvilEmpire]

Some time ago we built a price comparison script for online travel agencies, very hard work because you had to crawl the requests instantly on a search from a visitor....

This script does look good and 450 bucks for it is cheap.
________
Park Royal 2 Condominium Pattaya (http://pattayaluxurycondos.com)

[redlabel]

Hi EviliEmpire im wondering do you still have this travel comparison script you built? can i see it working as im wanting to build a Australian travel comparision site ... similar to the way hotelscombined.com and kayak.com work
I want to use it to list my affilate sites for example webjet.com but they do not have a api or data feed to retrieve upto date products and prices so im not sure how we would get their product and pricing data?

i also want to set it up so merchants can join on a per per click campaign.. so anyone who clicks through to the merchant site on my travel comparison engine are then charged by us via pay per click.

so i want to be able to list all Australian travel companies either as an affillate where i get commission to refer customers to their site or on a pay per click system for my non affilliate merchants...

But their will be a lot of products and prices that change every hour so i need to be able to retrive their data in real time with upto date prices.. and alot of my merchants wont have an api or datafeed so i need to be ale to offer datafeeds but also be able to retrive their updated prices in real time some how...

Hope you have the solution Regards Geoff Sharp

[redlabel]

My name is Geoff sharp from Australia

After reading this post I thought I might try to contact you guys and see if maybe someone can help me

im wanting to build a comparison website displaying the cheapest travel from travel suppliers within Australian for Australian customers ... I have several affiliate partners ive joined for example www.webjet.com.au who are happy for me to display their products within a comparison engine but they don't have a API or datafeed. so I need to scrap their site and my Other affiliate sites who don't have feeds ... plus I want to sign up advertising of Australian travel on a pay per click basis like you do but im sure most advertisers don't have a datafeed and particularly with the travel industry prices are changing by the minute so I need to some how scrap these advertisers sites for update date prices on particular destination when requested by aussie customers and it has to retrieve them quite fast .is this possible?

basically I want to clone http://www.sidestep.com/ and www.Kayak.com in the way their work.. so we need a pay per click engine plus auto scraping and all used within comparison format

Im wondering if somone may help me who may have software for this, who is capable of building something like this as ive been researching for a month now and seem to be getting more and more confused...
Either way I thank you for any time you may have free to help an aussie out.
Regards Geoff Sharp
www.30-below.com

[EvilEmpire]

Ive sent a reply to you.
________
Live sex (http://livesexwebshows.com/)

[redlabel]

yes its MSN: info@australianaura.com also can you send all mail to info@australianaura.com also please as i get it faster Regards Geoff

[dyenira]

I am looking for travel comparison script. Can anyone who has info email pm me? thx.

[cyro]

certainly shows how difficult it is, after reading pricethat's very informative post, made me think twice about developing one

[phazex]

Hi Guys. Sort of a little late for me to join in on this discussion, but I can atest to the things that pricethat points out. I'm currently helping develop a price comparison se right now that's only based on feeds. At first glance price comparison se's look easy from a concept viewpoint, but they aren't when you think of all the details involved.

1. Data Importation and Manipulation: Not all merchants give you formatted data, pictures may be in unsuitable widths and heights, you have to factor in duplicate content, and think of rulesets for every merchant.

You have to keep duplicate results out which Eopinions.com didn't do in this case:

http://www.epinions.com/prices/Circa_Joan_David_CX101_Skateboard_Shoes_Collage_fo r_Men

Product descriptions may contain html entities that will need to be replaced or removed in your own code.


2. Information updating: You have to accurately update product information such as price and availability. As well as removing discontinued items from your db.


$400 is a small price to pay for a price comparison SE script when you think of all the complexities involved the entire process. Out of the types of price comparison websites, I think the ones based on feeds are the easiest to manage and develop. Scraping web sites involves too many variables. I hope this helps someone understand the true nature of price comparison SE's.

[reiner14]

From kaonsoftwares.com
i.E. Price comparison (http://www.geckoo.de)

From Pikomedia.de
i.E Product search (http://www.netguide-plus.de)

[kaon]

geckoo.de is just a example of site using kaon softwares' script.
There are many other website that are using kaon softwares' script like:
http://www.preis-zwerge.de
http://ni.compare.ie
http://www.kararyeri.com
http://www.order.com

[RedBaron]

Hi, I am looking for somebody to make for me my own airfare price comparison engine. I war reading a few threads from "Pricethat" and "EvilEmpire" which where made back in 2007.
Well I have been and still paying such comparison engines allot of money and line one of my colleagues I thought why not starting one myself, and that´s why I start this question now. Is there somebody who has developed one already and interested in licensing it to me or is there somebody interested in a joint venture ? I am open to everything.
I have advertised it on GAF (http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/358762.html) but so far not found anyone who really has understood what it means.
"Pricethat" has back in 2007 explained the difficulty...and I know there are even more difficulties to overcome than "Pricethat" has mentioned.

......but wy not say: YES WE CAN!......because I will do!

[gabsterino]

Hello sir! I see your previously posts regarding a price comparisation script in 2007. How has things developed on your script since then?

I am going to build a travel comparison script (comparing flights, hotels, rental cars, as well
as lastminute travels and all inclusive travels.)

I have 26 xml files from the major "flight" agencies, 24 xml from "hotel" agencies, and 13 from the biggest rental car agencies.

I was wondering if you would be interested in helping me develop this script, either helping me or selling some of your pre built software would be great. As i see you guys have some or much knowledge of doing this. I dont.

I have money to pay for your help or previous work.

Best regards from

Thomas Gabrielsen