Regional price tracking by state, province and country

01Why one country isn't always one market

Google Shopping answers every search for a place. The sellers it shows can change with that place: a regional chain that lists stock only where it has stores can appear in some states and not in others, and delivery options can differ too. Pricebeeper sends each region's searches with that region's own location, so a slot in California sees California's results and a slot in Ohio sees Ohio's.

Pricebeeper's re-checks allow for this. When a re-check reads a store's page and the price doesn't match what the search showed shoppers in that region, the offer is labeled Monthly (regional price) and kept on the regional search data, which updates at the monthly search. Daily and weekly re-checks explains that check.

Some markets price a product the same way nationwide and some don't. Test before you commit: track a sample in the country and in two or three states for two or three months, since regional results come from the monthly searches, and the regional arbitrage report shows which products differ. Keep states where they matter and one country slot where they don't.

02How regions and slots add up

A slot is one product in one region, and it is the unit you pay for. A region is a country or a first-level region inside it, and each state or province counts as its own region toward your plan's cap. The United States and California are 2 regions.

Slots are shared freely between products and regions. Plus has 1,500 slots and 2 regions: 1,500 products in one state, 750 products in each of two, or any mix within those limits. A product can also be tracked at country level and in single states side by side; each is a slot.

To start, select products on the products page, choose Attach to region and pick a region. The picker lists every country and its states or provinces, searchable by name. Pricebeeper attaches as many products as your remaining slots allow and tells you how many it skipped, with a link to add room.

03Examples for chains across states and provinces

The US chain's 2,400 slots fit Growth, which has 3,000 slots and 3 regions for $209 a month. That plan also re-reads known sellers daily and includes MAP monitoring and repricing.

The Canadian retailer needs a fourth region and 600 more slots than Growth includes. A 1,000-slot pack at $60 and a 1-region pack at $10 bring it to $279 a month. Across more provinces, up to 10, it would move to Pro: 10 regions and 12,000 slots for $799.

The German chain tests first: 300 products at national level and in its two largest states. Plus includes 2 regions, so one region pack makes 3, for $109 a month. If the states turn out to match the national results, it drops them and keeps one country slot per product.

04Reading the differences between regions

Pricing analytics includes a regional arbitrage report. It ranks your products by the spread between their cheapest and dearest region, over the last 30 days by default and at most the last 90, and lists each region's average price.

• Regions are compared only within one currency: US states with each other and euro countries with each other, never dollars with euros.
• By default a product is listed when its spread is more than 5% of the cheapest region's average, and out-of-stock offers are left out of each region's average. The API accepts another threshold and can include sold-out offers.
• The report leaves out the direct re-checks of single stores, so one store read several times a day doesn't tilt a region.

Each slot also has its own offers table, price history, alerts and target price, so a drop in Ohio raises an alert about Ohio. MAP reports can be broken down by region as well.

05What a product's regions share, and what they don't

• The match is shared. A product is matched to its Google Shopping product and Amazon ASIN once per country, so three US states use one match. Exact product matching covers how.
• Seller lists are not. Each region gets its own list of sellers for the matched product, searched from its own location.
• Store reads are shared where prices agree. A re-check whose price agrees with a region's search result serves every region that follows that offer. Where it disagrees, the offer stays on that region's search data.
• Marketplace accounts work by country. eBay, bol.com and Kaufland sources you connect answer per country, so a state slot uses its country's storefront.
• Pinned pages show one price. A pinned competitor page is the store's online price, recorded for each of the product's regions.

06Region caps and packs by plan

Region packs raise the cap: +1 region for $10 a month ($120 a year) or +5 regions for $40 a month ($480 a year). Packs need a paid subscription, so they can't be added during the Growth trial. The pricing page and slot-based pricing have the full tables.

If you downgrade below the number of regions you use, the regions you started monitoring first stay active and the slots in newer ones pause. They resume, oldest first, when capacity returns. Slots you paused yourself stay paused.

07Where regional tracking stops

• First-level regions only. Pricebeeper doesn't track cities, counties, metro areas, zip codes or single stores.
• No in-store shelf prices. Everything comes from online search results and store websites.
• Every region is a slot, so tracking 5 states uses 5 times the slots of one country.
• Searches for sellers run once a month in each region on standard plans, with known sellers re-read weekly on Starter and Plus and daily on Growth and up. An offer whose store page shows a different price than the region's search updates only at the monthly search. Daily or hourly searches need the sales-led Custom plan.
• Regions with different currencies aren't compared in the arbitrage report.

Enterprise vendors such as Intelligence Node and Skuuudle sell zip-code or store-level prices on sales-led contracts; their comparison pages set out the trade-offs.

Questions people ask