Grabbing e-commerce data: Competitor price monitoring system

Hands-on teaching you to use proxy IP to stare down competitors' prices

Doing e-commerce know that the price of competing products is the line of life and death. But manual price comparison can wear people out, today we teach you to use the proxy IP to get an automated monitoring system, especially suitable for small and medium-sized sellers to operate.

Why don't you use your own IP to grab the data directly?

The anti-climbing mechanism of the three major e-commerce platforms is not vegetarian. Last year, there is a boss who sells cell phone shells, using their own server to catch three days of data, the result is that the entire company's IP segment was permanently banned, the store traffic directly decapitated. Proxy IP is likeInvisibility cloak for reptilesIf you change your "armor" every time you visit, the platform will not be able to figure out where you are really coming from.

How to choose a proxy IP without stepping into a pit?

There are all sorts of agency services on the market, so keep these three key points in mind:
1. Level of anonymity: Highly anonymous proxies don't leak real IPs
2. Success rate: Anything less than 95% can be passed over.
3. Geographical coverage: To be able to simulate real users in the target area

Like we recommend ipipgo for a unique trick--Dynamic session holdIt can simulate the browsing behavior of a real person and is especially suitable for platforms that require a login to view prices.

Four steps to build a surveillance system

Step 1: Prepare the proxy pool
After registering with ipipgo, use their API to get dynamic proxies, and remember to select the "e-commerce-only" channel, the IPs in this channel are all whitelisted on the platform.

import requests

def get_proxy().
     Get the proxy from ipipgo
    res = requests.get("https://api.ipipgo.com/ecommerce")
    return f "http://{res.json()['ip']}:{res.json()['port']}"

proxies = {
    "http": get_proxy(),
    "https": get_proxy()
}

Step 2: Disguise the request header
Don't underestimate this, the platform relies heavily on this to recognize crawlers. Remember to randomly change the User-Agent for each request, if you use ipipgo their client comes with this feature.

Step 3: Set the collection frequency
Never glean to death! It is recommended that each product be collected at intervals of 30-60 minutes, and can be appropriately encrypted during peak periods. ipipgo's intelligent scheduling automatically avoids the platform's wind-control periods.

Step 4: Exception handling
Prepare a backup proxy pool, when an IP fails 3 consecutive requests, it will be automatically switched. It is recommended to use ipipgo's real-time monitoring function to switch IP failures in seconds.

Frequently Asked Questions QA

Q: What should I do if I keep getting my IP blocked?
A: Check three points: 1. whether to use a high stash of agents 2. request header is not fixed 3. collection frequency is too high. It is recommended to go directly to ipipgo's e-commerce solutions, they have optimized configurations for each platform.

Q: Data capture back is not allowed?
A: It could be that you're encountering a platform's anti-crawl strategy, for example:
- Return of false data
- Requires slider validation
At this time, you need to switch IP + modify the device fingerprint, ipipgo's virtual browser environment can be a perfect solution.

Q: How do I get an automatic warning when I monitor a price drop?
A: Set the price fluctuation threshold, such as ±5% to trigger email notification. It is recommended to use enterprise WeChat robot to dock, much more timely than email.

Practical experience sharing

Last year's Double Eleven, a customer doing home appliances used our program to successfully capture a competitor's limited time flash sale. The key operation was:
1. With ipipgoRegional AgentsFunctions to simulate users in different provinces
2. Setting up promotional pages to be collected every 15 minutes
3. Automatically triggered SMS alerts when price reductions are detected
As a result, we grabbed 300+ orders that day, quadrupling our usual.

Lastly, I would like to remind you that you should never try to get a cheap proxy service. Some service providers sell cheap IP, in fact, are marked by the major platforms of the blacklist IP, with this instead of bad. Like ipipgo such as specializing in e-commerce data collection, although the price is a little more expensive, but save the loss of the seal is not a small amount of money.