Speaker 1: Shopping online could be real pain. If the items you're looking for are outta stock. And then when you hear that a store has restocked that item it's sold out again today, I'm gonna show you how to use a tool called uptime robot to monitor stock alerts. So you're among the first to know Whether your kid can't wait to get their hands on poppy, the booty shaken pug, can't
Speaker 2: Beat a booty
Speaker 1: Shake and pop, or you're a grownup who still hasn't managed to find a PS five. Seeing the words out of stock or not available can really put a damper on your shopping [00:00:30] plans. Even C's holiday toys list has an outof stock section, but this problem isn't only limited to the holiday season. Let's take a look at how a service called uptime robot can help you track down hard to find items all year wall uptime, robot, isn't designed to be a shopping tool. It's actually a monitoring service for making sure your website is functioning as intended or alerting you. If it isn't, it's that alert system that we're gonna take advantage of today. When I create a monitor for the product, I'm trying to buy the new ed version of the Nintendo switch. As you can see here in the CNET holiday gift guide, you can buy [00:01:00] the switch through Amazon or Walmart, but I don't wanna pay inflated prices to these resellers Adorama's site offers it at the normal price, but it's currently shown as temporarily not available.
Speaker 1: And it's the same story. Over a game stop tube, depending on the store, you might be able to sign up for email or text alerts for when items are restocked. You could use a site like now in stock.net or follow websites like CNET to get the most up to date info. We have, I'd rather take a more proactive approach. An uptime robot lets me do just that. Here's how it works. First head over to uptime, robot.com [00:01:30] and sign up for a free account from your account dashboard. Click on the button, labeled new monitor, click on the monitor type dropdown and select keyword. Next, give your monitor or name. If you're going to track a number of stores, try adding the retailer name so you can keep them straight. Now copy the link to the web page for the product you want to buy and paste it into the URL field. Make sure the page is for that specific product and not a list of similar items. Now we need to enter the keyword that we want uptime robot to keep [00:02:00] checking for in this case for the game stop page, we're gonna use not available.
Speaker 1: And then I wanted to alert me when the keyword does not exist. This means every five minutes uptime robot will check the web page for the keyword not available. And when it doesn't exist on the page, the service will send you an alert, telling you your monitor is down. When it goes back out of stock, you'll receive another alert, letting you know your monitor is up. I realize that the down and up alerts feel backwards, but remember we're [00:02:30] using the site in a way it wasn't designed for. You might also try using the keyword add to cart since that's what you would see. If the item was back in stock and then set, the alert went option to keyword exists in theory, both should work. And of course it doesn't hurt to set up both options before you save select how you want to be alerted.
Speaker 1: There's an iPhone or Android app you can use, or you can receive text messages or an email, just check the box on the ones you want. And finally click create monitor. Since different stores sell the switch. [00:03:00] I'm gonna create a few different monitors to track them. Here's temporarily not available for Adorama out of stock for target. And I'll do add to cart on Amazon for when those words do finally show up. One thing to keep in mind here is that spelling and capitalization do count. Add to cart. Isn't the same as add to cart with a small T to make sure you've got it right. Try this little trick, go to the product page. You're tracking, right? Click the button that says not available or whatever your says and select inspect or inspect [00:03:30] element. This will show you the webpage source code. As you can see here, even though it's displayed in all caps on the page, in the code, it's shown like this.
Speaker 1: So that's what you want your monitor to search for. And who knows some of your coders might find some other nuggets in here that you can use to track your items even better. Once everything's up and running. You'll see your monitors here on the dashboard. If everything stays green, there's nothing left to do, but sit back and wait. But hopefully before too long, you'll get an alert like this, that the status of your monitor has changed. [00:04:00] If so, make a bee line over to the store in question with any luck, you'll be there in time to make your purchase and end your suffering as always for more shopping advice from our favorite products to the best ways to find them head over to cnet.com. And of course, don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks for watching. And if you're wondering, I do have a birthday come up before too long. I'll just leave this right here.
Speaker 2: Introducing poppy, the booty shaken puck, move it and groove it.
