Compare Product Prices Across Multiple Retailers

Last updated: 26 March, 20269 min read

PageCrawl can automatically group monitors that track the same product on different websites, giving you a real-time view of how prices compare across retailers. When the competitive landscape shifts, you can get alerts and export comparison spreadsheets.

What You Can Do

Capability Description
Side-by-side pricing See all retailer prices for a product in one place via the Matched Pages panel
Comparison alerts Get notified when a price becomes the cheapest, most expensive, or when the spread exceeds a threshold
Cross-retailer export Download a spreadsheet with one row per product and columns per retailer
Smart suggestions When linking monitors, PageCrawl suggests the most relevant candidates
Automatic grouping Monitors are grouped automatically when product identifiers match
Reference labels Manually group monitors using labels with a shared prefix
Google Sheets integration Include comparison data and label-based columns in automated Google Sheets exports

How Products Are Grouped

PageCrawl uses multiple signals to determine whether two monitors on different websites track the same product. When a match is found, the monitors are placed into a comparison group automatically.

Matching happens after each page check and when labels are updated. If the same product is listed on five different retailer websites and each monitor is set up with price tracking, PageCrawl will link all five into a single group.

You can also group monitors manually from the comparison panel on any monitor's detail page, or by applying reference labels (covered below).

Each comparison group can contain up to 20 monitors.

The Matched Pages Panel

When a monitor belongs to a comparison group, its detail page shows a Matched Pages panel. This panel displays:

  • The name and domain of each grouped monitor
  • The current tracked value (typically a price) for each
  • Quick navigation links to each compared monitor

From this panel you can:

  1. Add monitors - Search for other monitors to add to the group
  2. Remove monitors - Detach a specific monitor from the group
  3. View suggestions - See PageCrawl's recommended matches based on product signals

Smart Suggestions

When adding monitors to a comparison group, PageCrawl ranks candidates by relevance. Suggestions consider multiple factors including product identifiers, reference labels, folder grouping, domain similarity, and name overlap.

If the product comparison feature is enabled, suggestions are enhanced with stronger signals from product identifiers and reference labels. Without the feature enabled, suggestions still work but rely on name and structural similarity only.

You can also type in the search box to filter across all monitors in your workspace.

Comparison Alerts

Comparison alerts notify you when a monitor's price changes its competitive position within the group. There are three alert types:

Alert Type When It Fires Configuration
Cheapest This monitor's price is the lowest in the group No additional configuration needed
Most Expensive This monitor's price is the highest in the group No additional configuration needed
Price Spread The gap between the lowest and highest price in the group exceeds a percentage Set the spread threshold percentage

How Alerts Work

Alerts are transition-based. You receive a notification when the state changes (e.g., a monitor becomes the cheapest), but not on every subsequent check where it remains the cheapest. When the condition clears, the alert resets and can fire again later.

For example, if Monitor A is tracking a laptop at $999 and becomes the cheapest in a group of five retailers:

  1. You receive a notification: "Laptop X is now the cheapest at $999 (range: $999 - $1,299)"
  2. On subsequent checks, as long as Monitor A remains the cheapest, no new notification is sent
  3. If another retailer drops to $949, Monitor A is no longer the cheapest and the alert clears
  4. If Monitor A drops to $929 and becomes cheapest again, you receive a new notification

Price Spread alerts work similarly. If you set a 20% threshold and the spread increases from 15% to 25%, you receive a notification. The alert clears when the spread drops below 20%.

Setting Up Comparison Alerts

  1. Open the monitor's settings (edit page)
  2. Scroll to Alert Rules
  3. Add a new rule and select one of the comparison alert types
  4. For Price Spread, enter the percentage threshold (e.g., 25 for a 25% spread)
  5. Save your changes

Comparison alerts are evaluated after every page check, using the most recent values from all group members. Alerts are delivered through your configured notification channels (email, Slack, Discord, Teams, Telegram, webhooks).

Cross-Retailer Export

Export a comparison spreadsheet to analyze all your grouped products and their prices in a single file.

How to Export

  1. Select the pages you want to include from your page list
  2. Click Export from the bulk actions toolbar
  3. Choose Comparison as the export type
  4. Download the XLSX spreadsheet

What the Export Contains

Column Description
Product Product name from page metadata, or monitor name as fallback
GTIN Global Trade Item Number if detected
SKU Stock Keeping Unit if detected
Brand Product brand if detected
[retailer domain] One column per unique retailer domain, containing the current tracked value

Each row represents one comparison group. If a group has members on amazon.com, bestbuy.com, and walmart.com, the spreadsheet will have three retailer columns.

If the same retailer domain appears more than once in a group (e.g., two product variants on the same site), the column headers are disambiguated with the monitor name.

Only monitors that belong to a comparison group are included in the export. Ungrouped monitors are excluded.

Reference Labels

Reference labels provide a way to manually group monitors using a label prefix. This is useful when automatic matching is not sufficient, or when you want to define your own product identifiers.

How Reference Labels Work

Apply a label with a specific prefix to monitors that track the same product. For example:

Monitor Label
Laptop X on Amazon ref:LAPTOP-X-2024
Laptop X on Best Buy ref:LAPTOP-X-2024
Laptop X on Walmart ref:LAPTOP-X-2024

All three monitors share the label ref:LAPTOP-X-2024, so PageCrawl groups them together.

The default prefix is ref, but you can change it in your workspace settings.

Applying Reference Labels

You can apply reference labels in several ways:

  • Single page: Edit the page and add a label in the format prefix:value
  • Bulk edit: Select multiple pages, click Bulk Edit, and apply the label to all at once
  • API: Use the tag management API to programmatically assign labels

When a reference label is added or changed, PageCrawl automatically re-evaluates comparison groups.

Tag Prefix Columns

Tag prefix columns turn label prefixes into structured data columns available in exports and Google Sheets integrations.

Configuration

  1. Go to Settings > Workspace > Tag Prefix Columns
  2. Add the prefixes you want as columns (e.g., sku, brand, ref)
  3. Optionally change the Comparison Prefix (the prefix used for product grouping)
  4. Save
Setting Description
Prefix Columns List of prefixes to expose as export/Google Sheets columns (max 10)
Comparison Prefix The prefix used for product comparison grouping (default: ref)

Using Tag Prefix Columns in Exports

Once configured, tag prefix columns appear as available columns in your Excel and Google Sheets export settings alongside the built-in columns (name, URL, current value, etc.).

For example, if you configure prefixes sku and brand:

  • A monitor with labels sku:WGT-500 and brand:Acme will show WGT-500 in the SKU column and Acme in the Brand column
  • Columns appear as tag_sku and tag_brand in column configuration

Changing the Comparison Prefix

When you change the comparison prefix (e.g., from ref to group), PageCrawl automatically re-evaluates groups for monitors that have labels with the new prefix. Existing groups built from product identifiers are not affected.

Note: Prefix names must be lowercase alphanumeric characters or underscores, with a maximum length of 50 characters.

Discovered Pages and Product Matching

When Page Discovery finds new pages and product comparison is enabled, PageCrawl checks whether the discovered page matches an existing monitored product. If a match is found, the discovered page shows the matched product's name and domain, helping you decide whether to add it to monitoring.

This is particularly useful for automatically finding the same product on newly discovered retailer pages.

Best Practices

Start with Price Tracking

Product comparison works best with monitors using price or number tracking modes, since these produce numeric values that can be compared. Full-page text monitors will appear in groups but cannot generate comparison alerts.

Use Consistent Reference Labels

If you manage a large catalog, establish a naming convention for reference labels. Using the same internal product ID across all retailers (e.g., ref:INTERNAL-SKU-001) ensures consistent grouping.

Combine Automatic and Manual Grouping

Let automatic matching handle the initial grouping, then review and adjust using reference labels for any products that were not matched correctly. Automatic and manual matching work together and complement each other.

Set Up Alerts Selectively

Rather than adding comparison alerts to every monitor, focus on the products where competitive pricing matters most. This keeps your notifications actionable and avoids alert fatigue.

Use Cross-Retailer Export for Reporting

Schedule regular exports to track pricing trends over time. Combined with Google Sheets integration, you can build dashboards that update automatically.

Limits

Limit Value
Max group size 20 monitors per comparison group
Max prefix columns 10 per workspace
Prefix name length 50 characters

Requirements

Product comparison is available as a team-level add-on. Contact support or your account manager to enable it for your account.

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