Amazon Browser

Open

The Amazon Browser is a tool within Price Checker 2 which allows you to scan Amazon search results, a brand store, or a competitor’s storefront, and run the listed products through your PC2 analysis.

In essence this replaces the input file with items read directly from the browser.

Instructions

Begin by launching the browser using the orange button in Price Checker. This will launch a control window and an instance of Chrome which is controlled by and linked to PC2.

This control window can be independently minimised and resized. Clicking the orange “Amazon Browser / Storefront” button again will bring the existing window to the foreground if already opened.

Open

You will see 3 buttons on the control window:

1. Check Page for Products

First, let’s navigate to a page we want to run. Do this by browsing as normal using the connected Chrome browser (not your own, which might be open separately). In the rest of this guide, when we say ‘Chrome’, we mean that special Chrome window (Chromium with a blue logo as of version 3.1.0).

The following types of pages are currently supported:

If you’d like to try these, you can copy and paste the links into Chrome.

Once the desired page is open, hit “Check Page for Products”. It may take a few seconds before anything happens, but you should then see a “Deep Scan” popup, looking something like this:

Once this is complete, the control will update to show an expected number of results, and “Analyse XYZ” will light up green instead:

2. Analyse [store/brand/results title]

Click this button now and you’ll be taken to the same run page as when launching files:

From here you can start the run or abort (by closing the window), after making any necessary configuration changes as explained in Run Settings .

Cost Column

On the run settings screen you will see under 4. Cost Column that the default is “B: Cost: 50% Storefront Price”. This is explained below.

Supplier Multipack Column

Under 5. Supplier Multipack Column the default is “C: Pack Size”. This is actually the Packaging Quantity as listed on Amazon. This means that the listed price can be correctly interpreted on a per-unit basis in arbitrage situations. In a browser run this is important when encountering multi-variation parents. For more information please see Run Settings | 5. Supplier Multipack Column .

Browser Run specific settings

Some special configuration is possible when launching from the browser.
These can be adjusted under Analysis Options:

Cost Percentage

We call this the Storefront or Browser Cost Percentage. The purpose of this setting is to give PC2 an initial cost figure to work with, because as you can imagine there is no way for you to explicitly input a price for each ASIN that is taken from the search results. The label will change depending on your configured percentage.

As an example of how this works, take this random product listing taken from Amazon.de:

Here the listed price is €21.99. When configured as 50%, PC2 will use a cost of €12 for working out fees and potential profit.

Slow down the browser

This is an advanced setting and in most cases it won’t be necessary to uncheck this option.

Amazon restricts browsing by showing captchas or returning error pages when it thinks that it has detected an automated tool instead of a human user. This can happen if pages are accessed too quickly or the browsing pattern suggests so. The ‘slow down’ option introduces a delay which makes this much less likely.

Browser Run specific output

In addition to the main input columns explained above, the output will also contain a “Prime?” columns.

Subscribe & Save or Sponsored Listings

PC2 ignores Sponsored Listings. These are not reflected in the estimated results in the beginning, nor in the output, but the non-sponsored product could appear if it is part of the ‘regular’ results and is found during browsing.

PC2 always uses the “buy once” prices instead of S&S.

Major Brands

If you have the Major Brands filter enabled, please note that the deep scan will automatically skip brands listed in it. This reduces the length of the run. However, just like the regular filter it may not skip misspellings or alternatives. Add them to your major brands file to remove them in the future.

Troubleshooting

Related articles