Patent ID: 7373314

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for collecting product data to facilitate at least one of searching, comparing prices, viewing and ordering products at a single shopping website, comprising: retrieving, by a host computer, a product feed from a plurality of websites associated with at least one of suppliers and merchants; determining a source of said product feed, wherein said source is said at least one of said suppliers and merchants; extracting an image from said product feed when said source is a supplier; retrieving an image from a website of said merchant when said source is a merchant; creating a normalized data feed from said product feed; parsing said normalized data feed and either said extracted image or said retrieved image into categorized data elements to determine when a category exists in a product table which corresponds to said categorized data elements, wherein said categorized data elements are added to a buffer table when said category does not exist and said categorized data elements are integrated with stored product data within said product table when said category exists to create integrated data; and, providing said integrated data to a user such that said user may utilize a single shopping website to search for, compare prices and order said products, wherein said products are associated with said stored product data from a plurality of websites, wherein each of said plurality of websites may be associated with a different at least one of said suppliers and said merchants.