Shop Smarter With Gazaro

As a connected guy, I do most of my shopping online. It’s easier, more convenient, and usually cheaper, too, even after you factor in shipping. As such, any tool that helps me shop smarter online is a good thing. Many times, when I’m shopping for something, I’ll check prices across a number of different retailers, to make sure I’m getting it as cheap as possible. However, that only provides me with a snapshot of pricing NOW, which is only partially helpful. What if you could find out the pricing trend of a specific item, for various retailers?

Now you can, with Gazaro. This site (requires free registration) tracks pricing for electronics across a number of popular sites, such as Amazon and Newegg. It then presents this information as an easy-to-read graph, showing you any recent price drops (or increases) for the recent past. Why is this useful?

For starters, some retailers are known to drop the price of items for the weekend, which would be good to know if you’re planning on buying something on Thursday. It’s also helpful to know if an item’s pricing has remained steady, or fluctuated frequently. If it’s constantly changing, you might be better off monitoring it for a few days. Also, the graph shows what today’s price is, compared to other days. Again, helpful to know if the item has been cheaper in the past, or if it’s due for a price drop.

For instance, let’s take a look at the Nokia N95, from Newegg.com. It’s currently priced at $300 – quite the deal. Looking at the graph, we can see that, at Newegg.com, the phone sold for $429.99 as recently as October 2008. Since then, it dropped steadily until December 22, where it stayed at $339.99 until February 18. Since then, it has fluctuated between $339.99 and $300 every few days, but appears to have stayed at $300 for the past three weeks – a good indicator it’s going to stay this price for a while.

There are a few cool features that you get with your free account, as well. For starters, you can subscribe via RSS to a specific item – helpful for monitoring pricing without having to manually check back all the time. You can also save multiple items, for the power shopper.

Gazaro currently tracks electronics, though is looking to expand further, according to their website.