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Google Businesses

Who Is the Mystery Shopper Leaving Behind Thousands of Online Shopping Carts? (wsj.com) 97

A Google crawler has been adding products to e-commerce site shopping carts, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. From a write-up: Sellers have been complaining about a serial cart abandoner named, John Smith. Turns out John is a Google bot. A Google spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that it built systems to ensure the pricing seen on the product pages is reflected when a user adds a product to the cart. GoogleBot shopping. Google told Search Engine Land in a statement, "We use automated systems to ensure consumers are getting accurate pricing information from our merchants." Sellers that upload their product feeds to Google Merchant Center may not realize it, but they agree to having Google's bots crawl their sites for price verifications when they agree to the Terms of Service. The bot is designed to ensure the price in the feed matches the price on the product page and when the product is added to the cart. The automated system will disapprove items that don't pass pricing verifications. Google is aware that this may cause issues for merchants and owners of e-commerce sites. Google told the WSJ, "This sometimes leads to merchants seeing abandoned carts as a result of our system testing the price displayed matches the price at checkout." That data can mess with e-commerce site owners' abandoned cart metrics, making them look artificially higher than they really are.
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Who Is the Mystery Shopper Leaving Behind Thousands of Online Shopping Carts?

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  • Abandoned e-trolly carts.. I like it.
    • I wonder if they will add e-coins to move them. Perhaps during corona times someone could be paid to e-return them to the line.

      • An idea for a new hobby? Leave shopping carts full of crap every time you go to the supermarket, just to be a complete troll... I would never have thunk it (thank heavens)

        By the way, if I was a dictatorial tyrant, I would require web crawlers doing this to complete the checkout (and pay), this would amuse me...

        • by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

          An idea for a new hobby? Leave shopping carts full of crap every time you go to the supermarket, just to be a complete troll... I would never have thunk it (thank heavens)

          ...

          40 years ago I worked in retail. Didn't seem to matter, hardware, clothing, even food stores people take stuff and leave it some place else. Sometimes in another part of the store, sometimes in abandoned shopping carts. They realize they forgot their wallet, things happen like their blood sugar is low, etc. I used to set up carts full of crap to be put back by department and then call them up to get it.

    • Can we have an e-river running through the middle of e-town, for them to be thrown into?
  • by SlithyMagister ( 822218 ) on Friday July 03, 2020 @12:11PM (#60258374)
    expect a lot of people to deliberately do it.
  • Necessary evil. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LenKagetsu ( 6196102 ) on Friday July 03, 2020 @12:11PM (#60258380)

    Though it causes them problems, the problems are far less impactful than being on the front page of reddit under the image "This piece-of-shit retailer claims the book is $12 but when you add it to the cart it's suddenly $20 excluding shipping!", or getting hit with a false advertising lawsuit/investigation.

    Google should make sure their carts get cleared out ASAP though.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by MattMann ( 102516 )

      necessary evil? why does google get to use bots to scan others, but I'm not allowed to use bots to scan google?

      evil is in fact not necessary, find another word.

      • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

        necessary evil? why does google get to use bots to scan others, but I'm not allowed to use bots to scan google?

        Because either (1) you agreed to it in the terms of service for the Google Merchant Center or (2) you're not affected. You always have the option to (3) LEAVE.

        Read the damn summary.

        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          You all done missed it. This was done by a robot, an internet program designed to log onto a sellers page and place an order, whilst monitoring all site labels and outputs. The log in with a robot bit, so how the fuck did google get past recaptcha, clearly they have hacked it, no recaptcha for you when a Google ROBOT comes a knocking, bend over and take it. So google AI and forum chat robots pushing propaganda with a backdoor straight through recaptcha, you all don't see that as a bit off.

          • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

            You all done missed it.

            I done missed nothing. "Sellers that upload their product feeds to Google Merchant Center may not realize it, but they agree to having Google's bots crawl their sites for price verifications when they agree to the Terms of Service." You done missed that.

            And Google runs Recaptcha, genius. That's how "they got past it." No hacking required, especially when they agree to having Google's bots crawl their sites for price vertifiations when they sign up to be listed on Google Shopping.

            I

      • Did you try asking google's permission? Did they give it to you?

    • If retailers, especially in countries with weak consumer laws, did not chronically and ubiquitously lie about prices on their website by excluding taxes or in other ways then they wouldn't have this problem. They brought this upon themselves.

  • Professor Chaos strikes again: https://vignette.wikia.nocooki... [nocookie.net]
  • so that is why tickets sell out in 30 sec and you need to play the reload game to get them when the cart expires

  • That aspect probably does not matter to google, as google got the data it wanted.
  • by Dr.Dubious DDQ ( 11968 ) on Friday July 03, 2020 @01:59PM (#60258724) Homepage
    So, their programmers are just too lazy to add a "remove the item(s) from the carts before virtually walking away" routine after their "add the items to the cart and check the prices" step? Seems like if they can add the items to the carts automatically, they ought to be able to remove them as well. If they'd empty the virtual carts at the end of the verification to clean up their messes, it seems like that'd solve the problem and still let Google suck up the information they're looking for.
    • So, their programmers are just too lazy...

      Or saving Google how much computing power by not doing something that provides no tangible benefit?

    • by dissy ( 172727 )

      So, their programmers are just too lazy to add a "remove the item(s) from the carts before virtually walking away" routine after their "add the items to the cart and check the prices" step?

      Who cares that an anonymous shopper left a cart and didn't return?
      Sounds to me like the shopping site is too lazy to learn what an expiration date is or how to use them.

      If they'd empty the virtual carts at the end of the verification to clean up their messes, it seems like that'd solve the problem and still let Google suck up the information they're looking for.

      No it wouldn't solve the problem. The problem is fraudulent shopping sites lying about their pricing.
      Emptying the cart has no effect on the problem. Adding things to a cart very much has an effect, it proves when the stores are lying to us.

      You seem awfully invested in Google, and in turn us shoppers, from having this information. Why?
      Why

  • I thought it would be the kind of prank the k-pop fans would pull...
  • Who is going to deal with all those bits lying around?
  • Google knows these actions maybe causing problems but, hey, "We're Google" so ... FU!

  • but if an item I add to a shopping cart suddenly jumps in price, I am perfectly capable of abandoning the cart on my own.
  • Sellers that upload their product feeds to Google Merchant Center may not realize it, but they agree to having Google's bots crawl their sites for price verifications when they agree to the Terms of Service.

    This is an open admission that they put stuff in the Terms and Services expecting the users to not know what they're agreeing to.

  • Google is aware that this may cause issues for merchants and owners of e-commerce sites.

    I would think if their bot can add items to a cart it can take them out too. But if Google, one of the highest valued tech companies can't do it, then I guess it's just beyond humanity's capabilities.

  • A lot of commenters assume that this bothers the sellers because it causes the product in question to be unavailable for other buyers.

    That's not at all what the sellers are worried about. They're worried about their abandoned cart metrics which is part of their voodoo pseudo-science marketing. In other words, they're worried that their sketchy invented statistics may be impacted by sketchy invented data. Half of marketing executives jobs is justifying to the company why their services should be retained

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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