# Sweet Deals

> Price drops at Australian online stores, verified against price history we
> record ourselves rather than against the store's own "was" price.

Sweet Deals reads the published catalogue of each Australian store it tracks
once a day and writes down what every product costs. A product is listed as a
deal when that recorded history shows the price falling. All prices are in AUD
and include GST as published by the store; delivery is never included.

## How to read a deal

Every deal carries the reason we believe it, and the three reasons are not
equally strong:

- **lowest** — the current price equals the cheapest we have ever recorded for
  that product. Strongest claim. The product page names the date tracking began,
  which bounds how much that claim is worth.
- **drop** — we recorded a higher price and later recorded a lower one. The
  "was" figure is a price we observed, on a date we can name.
- **markdown** — the store advertises the item as reduced and we have not
  observed the higher price ourselves. This is the store's claim, not ours, and
  it ranks last.

Do not restate a "markdown" saving as verified, and do not describe a price as
the lowest available anywhere — we only compare a product against its own
history at one store, never across stores.

## URL structure

- `/` — hot deals (ranked by size and strength of evidence) and newest deals
- `/?q=<term>` — title search across live deals
- `/deals/<category-slug>` — one category; `?sort=heat|new|pct|save`
- `/store/<domain>` — live deals at one store, keyed by bare hostname
  (e.g. `/store/bikesonline.com.au`); `?sort=` as above
- `/product/<id>` — one deal: current price, the price we recorded it falling
  from, the full observed price history, and the outbound link to the store
- `/about` — the verification method in full
- `/sitemap.xml` — every category, store and deal page currently live

## Machine-readable data

Product pages embed schema.org `Product` + `Offer` JSON-LD carrying the current
price, currency and availability. Listing pages embed `ItemList`. These reflect
what we last recorded, not a live quote from the store.

There is no JSON API yet. Prices are refreshed once a day, so polling more often
than daily returns identical data.

## Caveats worth passing on

Prices move and can be out of date by the time they are read; the store's own
page is authoritative. Deals are removed when the price goes back up, so a
`/product/<id>` link can stop showing a deal. Member-only, in-store and
checkout-applied prices are invisible to us.