Best of the Bots
Shopping for Shopping Bots
Part 2
By James Maguire
BidFind
BidFind focuses on searching online auctions,
crawling through 325 auction sites to offer the best price. Its agents update
information on 200,000 items twice a day.
BidFind features a rarity among shopping bots:
A keyword search on the front page that takes you quickly to a list of
items. No other category choices were necessary. And in fact there were few
other search defining possibilities available.
"No frills" describes BidFind's usability.
Our keyword search for "digital
camcorder" yielded no helpful results. Broadening the search to
"camcorder" provided 26 possibilities, many of which were irrelevant.
But we did find some inexpensive camcorders in the $150 to $300 range with one
model for $50. On the day we visited no digital units were offered.
The auction style creates an additional problem
when you're ready to commit to the purchase. We clicked on a link to a Sharp 8mm
for $459 only to find the auction over. The same was true for a JVC camcorder
for $325. However, we set our sites on a used Samsung for $50, and clicked
through to find myself in the middle of a furious auction;
the price had skyrocketed to $53, going up one dollar at a time.
BidFind could be an effective bot for those who
are flexible on make and model and aren't concerned about the hit or miss style
of an auction. If price is your
ultimate concern, BidFind could be your bot.
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