1.
Use a Google Spreadsheet to track items on various Amazon websites and get price
drop alerts by email.
Introduction
You can use a Google Spreadsheet to keep track of prices of any product listed on Amazon
shopping websites and get email alerts when the prices go down or up. The price tracker
supports all Amazon country specific websites include amazon.com (US), amazon.co.uk
(UK), amazon.es (Spain), amazon.de (Germany), amazon.in (India), amazon.fr (France),
amazon.jp (Japan), amazon.it (Italy) and amazon.ca (Canada).
You can download the Amazon Price Tracker from Digital Inspiration. The premium edition
lets you monitor prices of unlimited number of items and you can choose to receive email
alerts when the price meets your desired price.
For support, send an email to Amit Agarwal at amit@labnol.org or tweet @labnol.
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 1Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org

2.
Step 1: Copy Sheet
Open the link in your email and click the "Make a copy" button to clone the Amazon Price
Tracker spreadsheet in your Google Drive.
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 2Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org

3.
Step 2: Authorize the Program
Inside the spreadsheet, choose the Amazon Price Tracker menu and select Authorize.
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 3Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org

4.
Continue
Click continue to run the authorization wizard.
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 4Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org

5.
Accept
Authorize the Amazon Price Tracker to access your Google account. It needs these
permissions to read the list of items saved in your Google spreadsheet, for connecting to an
external service (Amazon API) for fetching the product prices and, should the price drop,
send email alerts to your address.
The script runs in your own Google Drive and you can also view the entire source code
inside the Script editor of the spreadsheet. Click the Accept button to continue
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 5Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org

6.
Step 3: Start the Price Tracker
Once the script is authorized, go to the Amazon Price Tracker menu in the spreadsheet and
choose Start Tracker.
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 6Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org

7.
Configure
This is an important step. You need to specify your email address where the alerts would go,
your current timezone and also choose the time when you wish to receive the price alerts. If
you have set a target price for any product, the price drop alerts will be sent instantly else
you'll receive a daily email digest of all track product whose prices have changed in the
previous day. Save your changes and close the Configure window.
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 7Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org

8.
Step 4: Add Products
Now that the Amazon Price Tracker has been successfully initialized, you should now add
one or more products to the watch list. Go to any amazon.* website, open any product page
and enter the full link (URL) of the product in column A (one product per line).
You should only enter links to product pages on Amazon and not search results pages or
category pages. For instance, here’s the product page for iPad on AMazon and here’s the
search page for iPad – you need to put the URL of the product page in the spreadsheet.
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 8Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org

9.
Set Desired Price
This step is optional but if you wish to receive instant emailalerts when the price of a
particular product drops by x% or when the price drops to $y or lower, you can set these
targets in Column B. If you leave the column blank, you'll only receive alerts once per day.
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 9Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org

10.
Price Updates
The price track is now ready to send you alerts. Within few minutes, the other columns in
your spreadsheet would auto-fill with the product details fetched from Amazon. It will have
the full name of the product, the current price and the product availability (stock inventory).
If any product product is out of stock, or if its price cannot fetched (as in the case of Kindle
books), it would be indicated in the Product Name column. Such products may be removed
from the sheet.
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 10Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org

11.
Limitations
Amazon Price Tracker lets you monitor prices of unlimited number of Amazon products from
a Google Spreadsheets. However, Google has set a limit on the number of emails your can
send in the 24 hour period.
For free Gmail accounts, Google allows to send a total of 100 email alerts in a single day. In
the case of Google Apps for business accounts, the email quota is 1500 email alerts per day.
If you try sending emails to more recipients in a day, the script would log an error message
and the email won't go until the quota is reset (this usually happens at 0:00 hours CST).
Also, for best performance, add a maxium of 500-600 Amazon items in a single spreadsheet.
You can create more copies of the spreadsheet to track more items.
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 11Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org

12.
Troubleshooting
If you get any errors, or if the price tracker has stopped work, you can check the Logs sheet
to troubleshoot and find the source of the errors.
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 12Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org

13.
Get Going
Here's a sample price alert sent by the tracker. You can always open the Google
Spreadsheet to add new items or removed existing ones from the watch list. If you ever wish
to stop receiving alerts, go the Price Tracker menu in the sheet and choose Uninstall.
You can get the Amazon Price Tracker (premium) from Digital Inspiration. For support,
contact Amit Agarwal at amit@labnol.org or tweet @labnol.
Amazon Price Tracker
Page 13Digital Inspiration www.ctrlq.org