Ghost WatchTrust
We crawl in the open, and we show our work.
Competitor tracking only works if you can trust the data and the way it was collected. Here are the rules our agents follow, how to recognize them, and how we handle your store’s data.
Ghost Watch is in private development and doesn’t visit any websites yet. These are the rules our agents will follow from their first request. We’ll publish our crawler’s exact name and keys on this page before then.
Our rules
How our agents behave on other people’s websites.
We read public pages
Only what any shopper can see without an account. We never log in to competitors’ sites, and never buy anything: we stop before payment.
Every request says who we are
Our agents sign their requests with Web Bot Auth, an open standard being developed at the IETF, so websites can check it’s really us.
We follow robots.txt
If a site’s robots.txt or published access rules ask us not to visit a page, we don’t.
We go easy on websites
We spread our visits out, slow down when a site is busy, and back off when it tells us to.
Blocked means blocked
We don’t try to get around blocks, CAPTCHAs or bot protection. If a site blocks us, we tell you.
Every number shows its source
Each price, promotion and AI answer records the page it came from, when, and from where.
For website owners
Our crawler
If you run a website and see Ghost Watch in your logs, this section is for you.
How to recognize it
Our agents identify themselves in two ways: a user agent that names Ghost Watch and links to this page, and a cryptographic signature on every request, using HTTP Message Signatures as described by Web Bot Auth. We’ll publish the exact user agent and our public keys here before our agents make their first request, so you can verify a request really came from us.
How to opt out
- Block our crawler in your robots.txt. We’ll list the name to use here before launch.
- Or email hello@ghostagentwatch.com with your domain, and we’ll stop visiting it.
What we look at
Public product, category and promotion pages, and the checkout up to the point where a shopper would enter payment details, to see the price a customer would actually pay. We don’t create accounts, submit orders, or collect information about your customers.
Your data
Your store’s data stays yours.
When you connect your Shopify store, Ghost Watch uses your products and sales to rank alerts by their effect on your business.
- We ask only for the access we need, and only to read.
- Your data is used to run your account, and nothing else.
- We never sell it, and never show it to other customers.
- We don’t use it to train AI models.
- Disconnect at any time, and ask us to delete everything.
Security
How we look after your account.
Encrypted
Everything travels over HTTPS.
Hosted in the US
On Render’s cloud platform, in Ohio.
Protected sign-in
Passwords are stored as one-way hashes, with limits on repeated attempts.
Private error reports
Personal details are removed from error reports before they leave our servers.
Questions
About data and crawling
Is competitor price tracking legal?
Reading publicly available prices is common practice in retail, and it’s what shoppers and price-comparison sites do every day. We stick to public pages, follow sites’ published rules and identify ourselves. This isn’t legal advice: if you have specific concerns, ask your lawyer.
Can a competitor see that I’m tracking them?
They can see that Ghost Watch visited their site, because we identify ourselves. They can’t see which of our customers asked us to look.
What happens if a site blocks Ghost Watch?
We stop and show that site as blocked in your account, with the reason. We don’t try to get around blocks, CAPTCHAs or bot protection.
Do you use my store’s data to train AI models?
No. Your store’s data is used to run your account, such as ranking your alerts, and nothing else.
See your competitors clearly.
Join the waitlist for early access. We’re starting with a small group of Shopify brands.