Price Comparison Website

[giggip]

Hi,

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum but I'm not really sure where else to post this.

I am wanting to design a price comparison website. I know that I have to use some kind of agent technology but that's as far as I have got at the minute.

I am planning to make this with JSP.

Can anyone explain more about agents and what I should use to make such a site? Also, any recommended reading?

Thanks!

[frank001]

There is a great tool available from Kapow which allows you to set up agents (or robots) to retrieve data automatically from other sites and load it into a database:

http://www.kapowtech.com/products_data.html

Another option is to outsource the scraping part of the design so you just get the feed as an xml file or via web service. There is a Chinese price comparison site at www.12rmb.com which I am involved with - which has developed its own custom scraping system -, which can help you with this.

[marshall1]

hi Frank:
do you do work setting up price comparison websites? If so, I have a simple one I'm looking to set up. Pls contact me
Marshall

[frank001]

Yes I help set up price comparison sites or can license the framework if you like. Please contact me via the contact us form on PriceMe our price comparison site: http://www.priceme.co.nz/About/contactUs.aspx

[mishakrunic]

You may want to check price detection tool - Price2Spy (http://www.price2spy.com)
It uses proprietary scraping mechanism to detect price changes, which are followed by automatic email alerts.