AUCTION SHOPPING BOT (AUCTION SHOPPING ROBOT)

Software for searching on-line auction sites (such as ebay) to find items of interest and for tracking those items The term "bot" is short for robot The term "shopping bot" has been used before in on-line retailing to describe services that search for new merchandise As far as we know, no one before us has applied the idea of a shopping bot to on-line auctions, and no one before has used the term "auction shopping bot" The implementation for on-line auctions is completely different than the implementation for new merchandise on-line retailing, because of 1) the lack of structure in on-line auction descriptions, and 2) the variety of the items of highest interest to collectors