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Makes you wonder whether the smart thing to do is just make it convenient for the bots to get the info out so they won't ruin your data and waste your bandwidth

Makes you wonder whether the smart thing to do is just make it convenient for the bots to get the info out so they won't ruin your data and waste your bandwidth. Can't fight them, join them. Can't really stop free information flow.

kqr 6y ago
Or quietly detect the bots and feed them junk data after they've gone through the hoops. Not saying it's the better option, but knowing the business maybe the more likely one.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Which is why it should be a chrome extension (like Honey); exfiltrate the data out while providing the end user financial benefits. Messing with the data breaks the user experience and impacts revenue of the target site.
- inetknght 6y ago
  > Or quietly detect the bots and feed them junk data Just a few customers with alternative browsers being detected as "bots" will poison your reputation and income stream.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    As someone who uses an alternative browser… I kinda doubt it. As a group we wouldn’t even move the analytics needle let alone revenue.
  - rabanne 6y ago
    No, it definitely won’t. In fact our card payment system has been updated to think alternative os and browsers are high-risk and even decline payment. We didn’t have any revenue loss.
    - bduerst 6y ago
      That's why bots now mimic users beyond user agents, even going so far as loading page assets and javascript. Unless you're using something like recaptcha V3, it's going to be difficult to detect them, and even that requires some interactions first.
  - randomdude402 6y ago
    Nah. Google doesn't even let people log into their own email with alternative browsers, and they are doing fine.
WWLink 6y ago
Or they could stop spying on their customers and trying to figure out how to add dark patterns to maximize "engagement" and "conversion" lol. I mean yeah, I get that if you inadvertently make the checkout button hard to find, you'll lose potential sales, but I don't think you need intricate data about what your customers are doing to figure that out.
- bduerst 6y ago
  Not sure about dark patterns, but you're talking about magnitudes of tens if not hundreds of thousands of visitors here. Increasing conversion rate by even a few percentage points has huge revenue implications.
stingraycharles 6y ago
They already do that, there’s all kinds of XML and JSON and whatnot standards to communicate product info, inventory, whatnot. The reason Google is doing this is because this information cannot be trusted all the time, there will always be bad actors. The process may eventually evolve in a cat-and-mouse game, where malicious e-commerce sites try to detect these Google crawlers and serve different price info to them, but let’s hope it doesn’t get this far.
- viraptor 6y ago
  Given the possibility you get detected and it impacts your organic search ranking... I'm not sure any serious vendor would risk it. And if they do, let them burn.

kqr 6y ago

Or quietly detect the bots and feed them junk data after they've gone through the hoops. Not saying it's the better option, but knowing the business maybe the more likely one.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Which is why it should be a chrome extension (like Honey); exfiltrate the data out while providing the end user financial benefits. Messing with the data breaks the user experience and impacts revenue of the target site.
inetknght 6y ago
> Or quietly detect the bots and feed them junk data Just a few customers with alternative browsers being detected as "bots" will poison your reputation and income stream.
- Spivak 6y ago
  As someone who uses an alternative browser… I kinda doubt it. As a group we wouldn’t even move the analytics needle let alone revenue.
- rabanne 6y ago
  No, it definitely won’t. In fact our card payment system has been updated to think alternative os and browsers are high-risk and even decline payment. We didn’t have any revenue loss.
  - bduerst 6y ago
    That's why bots now mimic users beyond user agents, even going so far as loading page assets and javascript. Unless you're using something like recaptcha V3, it's going to be difficult to detect them, and even that requires some interactions first.
- randomdude402 6y ago
  Nah. Google doesn't even let people log into their own email with alternative browsers, and they are doing fine.

WWLink 6y ago

Or they could stop spying on their customers and trying to figure out how to add dark patterns to maximize "engagement" and "conversion" lol. I mean yeah, I get that if you inadvertently make the checkout button hard to find, you'll lose potential sales, but I don't think you need intricate data about what your customers are doing to figure that out.

bduerst 6y ago
Not sure about dark patterns, but you're talking about magnitudes of tens if not hundreds of thousands of visitors here. Increasing conversion rate by even a few percentage points has huge revenue implications.

stingraycharles 6y ago

They already do that, there’s all kinds of XML and JSON and whatnot standards to communicate product info, inventory, whatnot. The reason Google is doing this is because this information cannot be trusted all the time, there will always be bad actors. The process may eventually evolve in a cat-and-mouse game, where malicious e-commerce sites try to detect these Google crawlers and serve different price info to them, but let’s hope it doesn’t get this far.

viraptor 6y ago
Given the possibility you get detected and it impacts your organic search ranking... I'm not sure any serious vendor would risk it. And if they do, let them burn.