Affiliate Search Tools

[its-a-gift]

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Hi there,

I'm setting up a site that allows users to set up gift lists for special occasions. I have looked at the Amazon Product Advertising API and it seems you can just about do anything programatically with it.

Every other retailer I've looked at doesn't appear to offer any kind of search API?

When adding an item, I want a user to be able to search for, say, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" under a category (e.g. Books) and then go off and search all the retailers I have enabled for that particular category and search phrase.

With Amazon this is simple, but how on earth can I do it with everyone else? The closest I've seen to being any good is the Argos API, but that requires you to know the Category ID to search for products in that category (which is no good as I don't know the category IDs and I don't want every product in a category, rather a filtered result set based on the keywords).

I'm using C#, so anything that uses cross-platform standards (Web Services, WSDL, REST etc) is fine.

Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

Many thanks.

[andylink]

Probably have to look at datafeeds for those without an API which will be most of the merchants in the sector you're working in.

[andylink]

Or affiliate windows product serve API but I haven't used it so couldn't vouch for how easy/good it is to work with

[enjoymarcus]

I think most affiliate networks offer a Product API? The issue is making sure any results are refined by country... There could be a work around for the Argos API issue - why don't you try emailing one of their account teams? The contact details are at the bottom of Argos Affiliate Hub | Argos Affiliate Program

Skimlinks were building an excellent solution for this exact issue, Everyfeed.net - unfortunately, it seems that only a handful of merchants were ever integrated and support has ceased. If you are interested I would try emailing merchants@skimlinks.com