UPC SPAM and UPC Errors – Our solution
Okay, so here is the problem: Some retailers (including Amazon) have multiple items for one UPC. In these cases their data is inaccurate. In other cases some people poison various UPC databases with BAD information. Today we take the results from ALL of our retailers for an item:
UPC: 733792422827
Buy.com thinks it is: Farstar – Broken Down and Wandering
Amazon.com thinks it is: Farstar – Broken Down and Wandering
Barnes & Noble thinks it is: Farstar – Broken Down and Wandering
Walmart thinks it is: Trojan Condoms – 500 pack
In our current version of ShopSavvy we assume retailers have accurate information. This assumption has prove to be wrong in a small number of well publicized cases. We will return the picture and description of the item from the source that responds first. So if Buy.com responded first we would get the correct item and result (Walmart’s item and price would be wrong if you clicked on it, but you might never notice this). If Walmart responds first we will think you scanned condoms (the other retailers listed would have the right item and right price, but you might not notice this either).
Our next version of ShopSavvy will average the results using ambient information. Ambient information is the info returned by retailers that includes a) title, b) supply chain data, c) picture and so on. In our next version we dump the results of the outliers. If 80% of the results for the UPC are Farstar we will assume anything else, including the condoms are delivered in error.
Poor condoms… getting the shaft… uhhhhhh
But what happens if you’re in Wal-Mart and want to price compare to other stores selling Trojans?
Instead of doing a weighted average, wouldn’t it simply be easier to ask the user “Are you looking for Farstar or Trojan pricing”?
First of all it is a great app for the android system. Since I’m living in the Netherlands i recieve a lot of ‘not found’ exceptions because of unkown UPC’s. Is there a possibility to add new UPC’s and the product which goes with it?
im sure this might of came up somewhere so, sorry in advance if it has. but why not just have the database look at the upc’s and which places are using that upc the most and keep that upc, and the least ones will go to other upcs that are being used by the same name . like above all places but walmart are using the same product, and if walmart had the product but under a different upc it’d show the upc for that one …
eh sounds better when i was it was in my head..kind of like a cross reference from left and right instead of upc it would go by name.
We are working on that as a feature for when we aren’t sure what the item is. When we KNOW what the item is we want to present that as the only result.
Yep, working on it.