Competitor Filtering Using “Contains"
Instead of having to type exact competitor names, you can disable any competitor in which the name contains certain words. If the word you’ve selected appears as a sub-string of the name of a competitor, then this competitor will be disabled.
Substring Example:
Disabling ‘Home’ will disable Homedepot.com and any other website or seller with ‘Home’ included in the listing.
Warning: Once these automatic filters are enabled, any previous manual configuration will be overwritten. If you have previously disabled a couple of competitors, make sure that your new automatic filter is configured to keep them disabled, otherwise they will be enabled. You can either toggle competitors ON/OFF manually or use the automatic filters. You cannot use both in tandem.
For instance, let's say you have these 5 competitor's names listed in your store:
Home Depot
Amazon.com
amazon.com - Levi's
Best Buy
Examples that would work (yields true):
Contains Depot, would disable the competitor number 1.
Contains best, would disable the competitor number 4, as it is not case sensitive.
Contains amazon would disable both competitors number 2 and 3.
Examples that would NOT work (yields false):
Contains adidas would not affect any of the 5 competitors listed above.
Contains bestbuy would not work because there is a space between the words "Best" and "Buy", so this is not a real sub-string of competitor 4.
Contains nike-us would not work, as this is not a real sub-string of competitor 5.
Using Special Characters (Wildcards)
A wildcard character is a kind of placeholder represented by a single character that can be interpreted as a number of literal characters or an empty string, so the full name does not need to be typed.
A Question Mark (?) can be used to replace one single character - which can be letters, numbers or special characters such as space, hyphen, underline etc.
An Asterisk (*) can be used to replace any number of characters - which can be letters, numbers, special characters or even null. This is especially useful when you are not sure how the competitor names will be listed.
For instance, let's say you want to disable the competitor named Dollar General Corp.
Examples that would work (yields true):
Contains Dollar?General would disable the competitor.
Contains D*ral would disable the competitor.
Contains *Dollar?General* would disable the competitor.
Example that would NOT work (yields false):
Contains D?General would not work, as there are more than 1 character between "D" and "General".
Contains ?Dollar would not work because there is no character before "Dollar" and the wildcard ? does not replace empty or null. Use * instead or just leave it as Dollar, and *Dollar will have the same result in a contains filter.
Final Considerations
Multiple Values - Please keep in mind that the contains filter accepts multiple values. You can insert any number of words or partial words in the filter. The system will disable competitors that have at least one of the words in their names (OR logic).
Delay - You might experience a delay before seeing a change in the status (enabled/disabled) of the competitor after you save the filter. This delay can last up to a few minutes depending on how many competitors there are in your store.
Testing – Make sure your filter is working as expected. If you have questions or find any issues, please contact our support.