{"id":527,"date":"2014-03-11T17:10:28","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T17:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.price2spy.com\/blog\/?p=527"},"modified":"2016-06-28T14:12:25","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T14:12:25","slug":"automatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.price2spy.com\/blog\/automatch\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Automatch – automated way to match products"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"apples-vs-orange\"<\/a>(or: How do we make sure we match apples to apples?<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Price2Spy clients already know that it\u2019s a great tool for monitoring competitor prices in case you need a multitude of competitor websites monitored. Our clients also know that the key to good price reporting is accurate product matching. Some of our clients did the matching themselves, some of them hired us for this task. However, when it came to large sites, with large number of products to be matched (10 000 or more products) this approach made little sense, because it was too expensive and time consuming. On the other hand, we have noticed that there are sites out there where product matching could be done in an automated way \u2013 and that is how the idea of Automatch was born\u2026<\/p>\n

What is Automatch?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Automatch is a continual automated product matching process that can be performed at different frequency intervals (daily, weekly, monthly), depending on clients’ needs.<\/p>\n

How does Automatch work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Automatch works in the following way: all existing products in a client\u2019s account that still do not have matching URLs on particular competitor sites are attempted to be matched \u2013 automatically. The matching is performed according to a set of matching rules, which we define together with our clients.<\/p>\n

Why Automatch?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have learned from our clients’ experience that they quite often face a situation that particular products are not found on a competitor site at the time the initial search was performed. However, after some time, they find out that the product in the meanwhile has been included in the competitor’s offer, but sometimes (especially if the competitor we are talking about is a main one) it might be too late, as the client’s offer is based on pricing data they get form Price2Spy (and since the product was not matched initially, Price2Spy does not know about it).<\/p>\n

To help our clients avoid this situation, we came up with a special offer – at first we had our data entry team do this product search manually (as an additional service). And yes, it worked for the clients who had several hundreds of products on about a dozen competitor sites. This offer was not really an option for clients with large accounts – thousands of products on dozens and even hundreds of competitor sites. We have built Automatch to meet the needs of this client profile.<\/p>\n

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One more thing \u2013 the costs of manual product matching tend to get too high once we speak of 10 000s of products or more. This is where Automatch kicks in \u2013 not only that it provides up-to-date matching data, but it\u2019s cost effectiveness gets better and better as the number of products to be matched goes higher.<\/p>\n

Who is Automatch meant for?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Automatch is mostly used by Price2Spy clients, large companies monitoring large number of products (10 000s of products or more), but an important prerequisite for Automatch to be feasible is for products to have SKUs, MPNs or any other product details to be uniquely matched by across competitor sites. Without that, Automatch still may be possible, but matching accuracy will have to be carefully investigated.<\/p>\n

Price2Spy clients using this feature are the ones dealing with electrical and electronic and household devices, TVs, cameras, IT equipment, car parts, electrical equipment and so on.<\/p>\n

As a rule of thumb, here is how to check if Automatch would work for you:<\/p>\n