Competitor Price Tracking: Dynamic Agent Real-Time Monitoring System

Why is it important to use dynamic agents for competitive price tracking?

Doing e-commerce know, staring at rivals price adjustment is like a war. Last week there is a 3C accessories customers, using ordinary agents to climb the data, just monitoring a price cut of 20 dollars, IP was blocked. Waiting for a new IP and then go in, people early inventory clearance - this is the cost of using the wrong agent.

Ordinary agents are like disposable masks, they are useless after use. Dynamic agents are N95.Real-time IP change + simulated real-life operationThis is the bottom line of continuous monitoring. Especially like ipipgo this kind of service provider, can do every 5 minutes automatically change the IP pool, simply do not give each other anti-climbing system reaction time.

Three steps to build a monitoring system (with a guide to avoiding the pitfalls)

Look at this list of configurations first:

Focus on proxy configuration: many people in the requests library directly hanging proxy, the result triggered anti-climbing. The correct posture isRandomly switch request headers + IPs with middlewareLike this:

 Pseudo code example
def process_request(req, spider):
    req.headers = get_random_headers()
    req.meta['proxy'] = ipipgo.get_proxy(region='us')

Catching packets in the real battle of the tawdry operation

A mother and baby brand client found that the target website used geo-fencing to restrict access. They used ipipgo's U.S. residential IP to grab data, and the result returned a price 15% lower than what they saw at home. later we did a tawdry operation:Grab the same product with 5 different state IPs at the same timeThe result is that the promotional strategies vary from state to state, and ultimately, the optimal purchasing solution is obtained by price comparison.

Here's a hidden trick:Make good use of the agency's regional portfolio. For example, when monitoring the Southeast Asian market, mixing ipipgo's Singapore and Malaysia IPs can effectively circumvent regional restriction strategies.

Must-have anti-blocking tips

These are tested and effective ways to save your life:

• Don't concentrate crawling at peak times (use randomly spaced requests instead)
• Don't be tough when it comes to CAPTCHA (switch IPipgo's new IP immediately)
• Fake traffic characterization (disguise crawlers as app interface requests)

There is a counter-example: a customer, in order to save money, set the request interval to a fixed 2 seconds. As a result, the other party's system detected the mechanical rhythm and directly blocked the entire IP segment. Later changed to a random 1-5 second interval, with ipipgo's automatic switching mechanism, the survival rate increased to 97%.

QA time: the pitfalls you may have encountered

Q: Dynamic proxies are more expensive than static proxies, is it worth it?
A: Do the math: the missing data caused by being blocked 1 time may miss the million dollar price difference. ipipgo's dynamic proxy is billed according to the successful request, the actual cost is cheaper than buying the blocked IP repeatedly.

Q: How do I judge the quality of the agent?
A: Look at three indicators: response speed (less than 2 seconds), availability (more than 95%), IP purity. For example, ipipgo's background can see these data in real time, but also automatically eliminate failed nodes.

Q: What should I do if I encounter a particularly vicious counter-crawl?
A: on the combination of punches: residential proxy + cellular IP rotation. Last week to help a clothing customer to get a perverted anti-crawling station, is to use ipipgo's mobile network IP, disguised as cell phone traffic to get it done.

One final truth:The monitoring failure of 90% is not a technical problem, it's that the proxy resource was not selected correctly.. Instead of tossing the code, why don't you get the IP pool done first. If you need to test it, you can go to ipipgo to get a trial, new users get 1G of traffic, enough to run through the whole process.