Search Bots Can Ease Very Real Frustrations of Online Shoppers

Shopping online used to be such a simple affair. Need a book? Go to Books.com. Looking for a jazz CD? Head over to CDNow. Want to buy a computer online? Just go to Gateway’s Web site.

But now everyone is getting into the act, creating a world of online shopping that is becoming just as confusing as its real-world counterpart.

There are thousands of e-shops on the Net, selling everything from Porsche Boxster wheel bearings to Escudo Cubano Gran Corona cigars.

Sifting through this mass of sites has become an exercise in frustration, confusion and repetitive finger stress.

Just as Web search engines eventually emerged to help make sense of the Net, a group of shopping tools has popped up to simplify electronic shopping. The tools are called shopping bots--a kind of electronic agent that searches the Net for specific products and then displays their prices at various online sites.

Bots and intelligent agents have been used for years to do the drudge work of the Net, such as finding new Web sites for search engines. As it turns out, comparison shopping is one of their better skills. Even the most dimwitted of these tools can usually turn up what you are looking for in a few seconds, saving you money and the trouble of clicking through a sea of e-shops.

For example, the hot Pokemon game cartridge for the Nintendo Game Boy sells for $29.99 at the Toys R Us Web site. But the shopping bot MySimon (https://www.mysimon.com) turns up a list of 11 other stores that offer the same item, with the lowest price of $19.99 available at Shopping.com.

The bookseller Amazon.com has always touted its low prices. A search by the bot Best Book Buys (https://www.bestbookbuys.com) for David Remnick’s new book, “King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero,” confirms that Amazon, at $15 for this one, is one of the cheapest sources of books on the Net.

But the Best Book Buy search reveals that Amazon’s price is not the lowest. That honor again goes to Shopping.com at $12.50.

One of the more interesting aspects of a bot search is that you can see the enormous price range on products. The search for “King of the World” turned up one company that was selling the book for $25, double the Shopping.com price. Life on the Net is going to be rough going for some retailers.

The bots work best when searching for common Net items, such as computers, electronic games, books, CDs and videos. Some of the best of the general-purpose shopping bots are Jango, part of the Excite search site (https://www.jango.com), Junglee, now part of Amazon.com (https://shoptheweb.amazon.com/stw/template/home.html), MySimon, Bottom Dollar Shopping Agent (https://www.bottomdollar.com) and Shopfind (https://www.shopfind.com).

Most of the shopping bots are free and require no extra software besides a browser. One exception is the AltaMax Online Shopper (https://www.altamax.com/), which requires its own special software priced at $19.95.

Specialized bots that are dedicated to a single product category, such as books or CDs, are by far the best of the bunch.

For example, a search for Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Gravity’s Rainbow” using the BookFinder.com (https://www.bookfinder.com) bot turns up 33 hits ranging from a $7 paperback version with slightly soiled edges to a $4,000 unrevised proof copy of the first edition from William Reese Co.

The Acses bot (https://www.acses.com) is another specialized book finder that has a wide following.

BidFind (https://www.bidfind.com) and Bidder’s Edge (https://www.biddersedge.com/) are interesting bots that focus on online auction sites. They search through numerous sites in pursuit of your auction desires and display current bids.

But as you drift further away from the mainstream of Net products, the bots begin to fall apart.

To test some of them, I searched for a carpet steam cleaner that Sharper Image had listed on its home page as a featured product.

Jango, MySimon, Bottomdollar.com, Junglee and Shopfind all failed to find the elusive Steam Wizard, although Shopfind came closest, turning up a variety of steam cleaners after a little fine-tuning of keywords.

Figuring that the Steam Wizard was probably a bit too obscure for these bots, I decided to search for something simple, such as a DVD version of the movie “Blade Runner.” This turned out to be way too easy. All the bots came back with enough versions of the movie to make your head spin.

The lesson of all this is that shopping bots are still young and, like most new tools, somewhat quirky and incomplete. The best strategy is to try some bots and find those that seem to work best for you.

One of the more complete collections of shopping bots can be found at Shoppingbots.com (https://www.shoppingbots.com).

A complete listing of other bots, such as those for watching the stock market or searching for information, is available at the BotSpot (https://www.botspot.com/search/index.html).

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Ashley Dunn can be reached via e-mail at ashley.dunn@latimes.com.

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