The method
How the free price check works
Where the prices come from, and why you can believe them. Esplanda compares up to 20 products your store and up to five comparable nearby businesses carry, and these rules run the same way for every store, every time.
In four lines
- The kind of business you confirm. Esplanda reads what you are, and nothing is compared until you confirm it.
- Comparable businesses in your trading area. Up to five of the same kind, never padded.
- Up to 20 products you all carry. Chosen by how many of you list them, inside a normal shelf price range. Your first 5 show free, straight away.
- A price only with its source and date. And only when the product match is certain.
01Your kind of business
A specific type, confirmed by you
A directory category like restaurant or grocery is too coarse to compare anything against. The comparison starts from the specific kind of business you are, and you confirm it before anything else happens.
- Five public signals. The categories on the business’s public listing, its name, the listing’s own short description, its published menu or catalog, and its price level. Review text is never read.
- A missing signal is left out, not counted as zero. A business with no menu online is judged on what it does publish, on the same scale as everyone else.
- When two readings are close, Esplanda asks. You see a question with the options. When one reading is clearly ahead, you still see it, with a “Not right?” option.
- Nothing runs without your confirmation. The comparison never starts from a guess; the type you confirm is the one used.
- Specialty grocers are their own kind. An Indian or Italian grocery is compared with its own kind, because its shelves barely overlap with a general grocer’s. The type is read from what a store sells, never from anything about the people who shop there.
- Built for three trades. Liquor and wine stores, grocery and convenience stores, and restaurants and cafés. A business is compared once it is placed in one of them.
The kinds of business it recognizes
Liquor and wine
Grocery and convenience
Restaurants and cafés
02Comparable businesses
Up to five neighbors of the same kind
Five nearest is the wrong rule. Downtown it returns five different kinds of business; in the country it returns businesses that compare with nothing. So the selection filters first, then ranks.
- Same specific type. A nearby business counts only if it reads as the same kind as the one you confirmed. A close cousin, like a pizzeria next to an Italian restaurant, is used only when fewer than three of the same kind exist within 20 miles, and it is labeled “Similar kind”.
- A radius that fits your area. The search widens in steps of 1, 2, 4, 8, 14 and 20 miles. In a busy downtown it tightens, so the choice is about fit rather than distance alone; in the country it opens out and stops at 20 miles.
- A similar price level. Where both businesses have a known price level, they must be within one level of each other. A fine-dining room and a lunch buffet are not the same business.
- Left out on purpose. Your own business, anything permanently closed, duplicate listings, and a second door of the same business.
- Chains, labeled and capped. A chain is often the price your customers compare against, so it can be included: at most two of five, labeled as a chain with the reason, and ranked below an independent at equal merit.
- Only real neighbors. If three comparable businesses exist within 20 miles, you get three, never a list padded to five. If none do, the report tells you.
03The products
Up to 20 products, chosen by overlap
A product only one or two of you carry compares nothing. So Esplanda compares up to 20 products your store and up to five comparable nearby businesses carry: the products the most of you actually list.
- Carried by at least three. A product qualifies only when at least three of the businesses list it, and one of them is you. Without your price there is no gap to show.
- Seen in the last 21 days. Older prices don’t count toward the choice.
- Inside a normal shelf range. A product outside its band is left out, however many stores carry it.
- Coverage counts most. The ranking weighs how many of you carry a product first, then how strong and recent its prices are, then how central it sits in the band.
- Spread across the shelf. For liquor, the first five are one each of wine, scotch, bourbon, tequila and vodka; the rest are the bottles most of you carry, across rum, gin, cordials and beer too. For groceries and restaurants, the first five are spread across categories and courses rather than bunched in one.
- The same answer every time. The same prices always produce the same products, with no randomness.
- Your first 5 are the fullest rows. The first 5 products in your report are the ones with the most nearby prices. Your first 5 products show free, straight away; sign up free to see them all.
| Kind of business | Price range | What is compared |
|---|---|---|
| Liquor and wine | $10–$50 | Wine, scotch, bourbon, tequila and vodka first, then rum, gin, cordials and beer |
| Grocery and convenience | $10–$30 | Common items across categories, such as dairy or snacks |
| Restaurants and cafés | Half to twice your own typical menu price | Menu items across courses, such as mains or desserts |
Below $10 a liquor shelf is mostly miniatures and mixers; above $50 the bottles are allocated and rarely stocked in common. A restaurant range follows your own menu, because a fixed range would pick appetizers for one room and nothing for another. The whole catalog, every week, is competitor price tracking.
04When a match counts
Only confirmed matches make the report
Matching the same product across six businesses is where most price comparisons slip. Esplanda’s rule is simple: only a certain match is shown.
Exact size and exact pack
A 750 ml bottle is never matched with a one-liter bottle, or a single with a six-pack, at any confidence.
At least 92% sure, and clearly ahead
A match is shown only when it clears 92% confidence and is clearly ahead of the next-closest product. The threshold is fixed in the code; nothing in a request can lower it.
Below it: counted and kept out
The report tells you how many possible matches it kept out to keep every row exact.
Nothing older than 21 days
An older price is not used at all: not faded, not footnoted. Within 21 days, newer prices weigh more; for most products a price’s weight halves about every two weeks.
The date it was actually seen
A price read earlier and kept keeps its original date. It is never restamped to look fresh.
Regular prices first
Where a listing shows a regular price and a sale price, the regular price is used. A price seen only on promotion is marked “On promotion” and counts for less.
A business that doesn’t list the product shows a dash and “no matching listing found”. Nothing is filled in from an average.
05Where prices come from
Published sources, in a fixed order
The price check prefers what businesses publish for machines to read, and goes to a store’s own website last.
Marketplace feeds
Published by the marketplace for reading, so nothing loads the store’s own website.
Marketplace storefronts
The same prices, read from the public store page where no feed exists.
Google local inventory
Where a store publishes it.
Online menus
For restaurants, usually on a menu service’s public page.
The store’s own website
Last, and only when its robots.txt says yes.
What every price carries
- The business
- The price
- Date and time seen
- The source’s name
- A link to the listing
- How sure the match is
- On promotion or not
No page copies are kept: only the product title, the price, and where and when it was seen. No price in a report is produced by AI; every number is read from a published page or feed.
Listed shelf price: the price a business publishes on its page or feed, with the source and the date it was seen. Loyalty, coupon and in-cart prices are separate.
How the crawler reads, how fast, and how a business can block it: the price check crawler policy.
06The gap and the yearly figure
A yearly figure backed by a published source
The gap is measured. A yearly figure adds an estimate of how many you sell, so it appears when that estimate rests on a published source, with its year.
The nearby median and the gap
- Nearby median. The middle of the nearby businesses’ prices, weighted toward fresher, surer ones. Your own price is not part of it, and it needs at least two nearby prices.
- The gap. Your price against the nearby median, as a percentage. Within 2% either way it reads “In line with nearby prices”, because a gap that small is rounding, not a pricing decision.
- Words and arrows, not color alone. “Above nearby prices ▲” or “Below nearby prices ▼”.
The yearly figure
- When it is shown. Only with a published figure for how fast that kind of product sells, with its source and year; at least two nearby prices; your own price; and a gap outside the in-line band.
- Priced above. The estimate is sales lost to customers who buy elsewhere, capped at about a third of them, valued at the nearby median and a typical margin for the category.
- Priced below. The estimate is money left on the counter: the gap on units you likely already sell.
- Every input labeled. Each line is tagged Measured (the prices, the gap, the dates, how much you list) or Assumed (units sold, the share who switch, the category margin), with the source of the sales figure linked.
- Only backed numbers. No range, zero or dash ever stands in for a figure.
This estimate uses a typical yearly volume for a store like yours, the biggest assumption in the number. Connect your register and your real sales replace it.
Every figure in this report is a price we saw, with its source and date. Connect your register and Esplanda puts each gap in dollars from your own sales.
07Coverage and corrections
Every report shows its own coverage
Above the rows, every report shows what it read, at the same size as the rows themselves.
Counted in every report
- How many public prices were read, and from how many of the businesses
- How many products were compared
- How many possible matches were kept out to keep every row exact
- How many of the grid’s prices were found
- Every source tried, and what happened. A source that blocks us is a fact about the source, never a finding about the business.
What the verdict means
- Good
- A full comparison: at least three nearby businesses with a readable catalog, and most prices found.
- Partial
- A focused comparison: fewer products, every one a confirmed match.
- Thin
- One or two products, or fewer than two nearby catalogs. The report shows its coverage in place of a table.
- None
- No confirmed matches across the businesses. The report lists every source it tried.
A price looks wrong
Each dispute is reviewed within two business days and ends in a correction or a removal. A price that can’t be re-checked comes out. Dispute a price.
Keep a business out
Any business can be removed within one business day, customer or not, and we stop collecting its prices. Remove a business from price checks.
Private by default
Your report isn't published or indexed, and only people with its link can see it. It becomes a public page only if the owner claims the business and then chooses to publish it. Read our privacy policy.
Our crawler
It reads robots.txt first, one request per second per website, and never reads a site that says no. Price check crawler policy.
Questions
Questions about the method
How does the free price check choose which businesses to compare?
It looks for businesses of the same specific kind as the one you confirmed, within a radius that fits your area and never beyond 20 miles, at a similar price level. Your own business, closed listings, duplicates and a second door of the same business are left out, chains are capped at two of five, and the list is never padded to reach five.
How many products does the price check compare?
Esplanda compares up to 20 products your store and up to five comparable nearby businesses carry. Each one is carried by at least three of the businesses, you included, so every row is built from prices actually seen, with no estimated cell. Your first 5 products show free, straight away; sign up free to see them all. Competitor price tracking, part of every paid plan, covers your whole catalog.
Why is a price missing from my report?
Either that business doesn’t list the product in public, its only price is older than 21 days, or no listing was confirmed as exactly the same size and pack. In each case the cell shows a dash rather than a guess, and the report counts what it kept out.
When does my report show a yearly dollar figure?
When the estimate of how many you sell rests on a published sales figure with its source, with at least two nearby prices and a gap outside the in-line band. Every other row shows the measured prices, and once your register is connected, your real sales replace the estimate.
Can a business block the price check from reading its website?
Yes. Our crawler, Esplanda-PriceCheck, reads robots.txt before anything else and never reads a site that says no. A blocked website is listed as a source that said no, never as a finding about the business. To be left out of price checks entirely, any business can ask to be removed, and it is done within one business day.
See the method on your own store
Get your free price check, or book a demo and we’ll walk through a report with you.
Free. No credit card. No connection to your register. About three minutes. Your first 5 products show free, straight away; sign up free to see them all.
