If you’re in e-commerce, marketplace analytics, or even just trying to keep an eye on rivals, you know that competitor pricing changes fast. Manually checking prices? Forget it. That’s why recurring web crawls are a must. This guide is for anyone who needs a reliable, realistic way to schedule price-monitoring crawls using Crawlbase—without creating a maintenance nightmare or setting off site alarms.
Let’s cut through the fluff and get you crawling for real.
Why recurring crawls beat manual checks (and what to watch out for)
If you're thinking, “Can’t I just run a quick script every now and then?”—sure, but you’ll miss price changes, promos, and stealthy adjustments. Recurring crawls catch the action as it happens, so you aren’t flying blind.
But here’s the thing: run your crawls too often or clumsily, and you’ll burn through credits, get blocked, or drown in messy data. It’s about working smarter, not just more often.
Step 1: Map out exactly what you want to track
Before you touch Crawlbase, get crystal clear on your targets:
- Which competitor sites? Don’t just say “all of them.” Start with your biggest threats or the ones known for price volatility.
- Which product pages? Homepages rarely have actual prices. List specific URLs or build logic to find product listings.
- Which data fields? Usually price, product name, maybe stock status—don’t overcomplicate it.
Pro tip: Fewer, well-chosen URLs and fields make crawls faster, cheaper, and less likely to break when sites change.
Step 2: Build and test your Crawlbase extractor
Crawlbase is flexible, but don’t expect it to magically “know” what you want. You’ll need to:
- Set up your account and get API credentials.
- Create a new extractor for each competitor or site section. Feed it a sample URL and define the data points to grab.
- Test with real pages—not just one. Sites love to change layouts, or show prices differently for logged-in users, locations, etc.
What works:
- XPath or CSS selectors are your friends for picking out prices.
- Use Crawlbase’s visual selector if you hate selector syntax.
What to ignore:
- Claims that “AI extraction” will save you from manual work. Sometimes it helps, but you’ll always want to review the output.
Step 3: Decide how often to crawl (and why less can be more)
How often should you crawl? It’s tempting to set it to “as often as possible,” but that’s usually a mistake.
- Daily is enough for most price tracking. High-frequency sites (e.g., Amazon flash deals) might need more, but that’s the exception.
- Weekly is fine for slow-moving industries or B2B pricing.
- Hourly is overkill unless you’re arbitraging or running a pricing engine, and even then, you’ll get noticed.
Things to consider: - Site volatility: Is your competitor known for sudden sales? Up the frequency (but test first). - Your budget: More crawls = more API credits burned. Crawlbase isn’t cheap if you’re careless. - Site defenses: Too many hits, too fast, and you’ll get blocked—no way around it.
Honest take:
Start conservative. It’s easier to ramp up than explain to your boss why you blew through $500 in crawl fees last month.
Step 4: Schedule your crawls in Crawlbase
Now for the automation. Crawlbase lets you schedule crawls through their dashboard or API.
Using the Crawlbase dashboard:
- Go to your extractor, hit “Schedule,” and pick your frequency (daily, weekly, custom).
- Set start times to off-peak hours. Crawling at 3 a.m. local site time often slips under the radar.
- Double-check the time zone—Crawlbase sometimes defaults to UTC.
Using the API (for more control):
- Use cron-style scheduling for complex timing.
- Automate different frequencies for different URLs (e.g., top sellers daily, others weekly).
Do NOT: - Schedule all your crawls for the exact same minute. That’s a red flag for many sites and could get your IPs blacklisted.
Step 5: Handle anti-bot measures before they handle you
Competitor sites aren’t dumb. They know people scrape prices. Some common defenses:
- CAPTCHAs
- Rate limiting (suddenly, every page loads slowly)
- Blocked IPs or user agents
Crawlbase helps a lot here:
- Rotate user agents and proxies by default.
- Handles many basic CAPTCHAs.
But… - Some sites get serious with bot detection. If you see missing data, weird errors, or way less output than expected, you might be blocked. - Don’t rely on Crawlbase to solve everything. Sometimes, scheduling less-frequent crawls or tweaking your crawl pattern is smarter than throwing more proxies at the problem.
Pro tip:
- Mix up your crawl times and intervals. Randomize a bit.
- Consider scraping logged-in pages only if absolutely necessary—those break more often.
Step 6: Store, compare, and sanity-check your results
Don’t just collect data—make sense of it.
- Pipe crawl results into a database or spreadsheet you control.
- Run simple checks: are you getting weirdly high/low prices? Did the site change its layout?
- Set up alerts for big price jumps or drops.
What works:
- Start with basic comparisons. Fancy dashboards sound cool but often sit unused.
What to ignore:
- “Real-time” dashboards unless you actually need them. They’re expensive to build and easy to break.
Step 7: Review and tweak your setup regularly
The web’s always changing, and so are competitor tactics.
- Monthly: Spot-check a few crawls. Make sure data looks right.
- Quarterly: Review your targets—are these still the right competitors/products?
- After big site changes: Update your extractors fast, or risk garbage data.
Honest take:
If you’re not finding and fixing issues every so often, you’re probably missing something. Crawls break quietly.
What to skip (unless you love headaches)
- Crawling entire competitor catalogs daily: You’ll pay a fortune and drown in data. Focus on top products.
- Trying to bypass advanced CAPTCHAs every crawl: If a site’s really locked down, pick your battles. Sometimes, it’s just not worth it.
- Chasing every “AI-powered” promise: Manual review > AI hallucinations, at least for now.
Quick checklist
- [ ] List your target sites and pages
- [ ] Build and test your extractors
- [ ] Pick a crawl frequency that matches your needs (and budget)
- [ ] Schedule smartly—avoid obvious patterns
- [ ] Monitor for anti-bot issues
- [ ] Store and sanity-check data
- [ ] Review and tweak as needed
Keep it simple, and iterate
Recurring crawls with Crawlbase can save you hours and keep you ahead of the competition, but only if you keep things manageable. Start with a small, high-impact list. Don’t overcomplicate your setup. Make it routine to check your results and adjust—no need for heroics.
Most competitor price monitoring fails because people try to do too much, too soon. Stay focused, stay skeptical, and let your crawling setup grow with your needs.