Apparently GoogleBot Can Add Products to Shopping Carts

A Google crawler has been adding products to e-commerce site shopping carts, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Sellers have been complaining about a serial cart abandoner named, John Smith. Turns out John is a Google bot. A Google spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that it built systems to ensure the pricing seen on the product pages is reflected when a user adds a product to the cart.

Sellers that upload their product feeds to Google Merchant Center may not realize it, but they agree to having Google’s bots crawl their sites for price verifications when the agree to the Terms of Service. The bot is designed to ensure the price in the feed matches the price on the product page and when the product is added to the cart.

The automated system will disapprove items that don’t pass pricing verifications.