Computers are also much quicker than the quickest intellect, able to search a database with billions of records in a fraction of a second. Intelligent agents are software routines designed to automatically retrieve the information you need and perform actions for you based on that information. Although bots today can perform academic research, chat with you, gather news, play games with you, and track stocks, many of the most popular are used by consumers and businesses for comparison-shopping over the Web. There are dozens of intelligent agents to choose from. Like search sites, which use similar technology, most are free.
Shopping bots work simply enough.
You type in the product or brand you're interested in, and the bot tries to find Web merchants offering it at the lowest price. Then you surf to the merchant's site. I've used bots to shop for some time now, more or less successfully. One problem is that most bots offer only product pricing information, ignoring the other factors that can make or break a shopping experience, such as a site's ease of navigation, product quality, warranty, service, shipping charges, delivery time, and whether the product is in stock. Nothing will sour you faster on bots than going to a site a bot suggests only to find, after filling out a detailed order form, that excessive shipping costs make the product more expensive than at other sites.