programmatically access car dealers inventory

database api inventory-management
bmanu picture bmanu · Dec 2, 2010 · Viewed 10k times · Source

Not sure whether this question makes sense on SO, but I'm working on a website that would provide a list of new cars of interest to the user, a bit like autotrader.com. Do you guys know how this type of websites operate? On autotrader.com I was thinking that maybe the dealers have to upload and update their inventory themselves. Does anyone know whether it is the case? Also I felt that when you go to a dealer in the US, they can search for a specific car through all the dealerships. Bottom line: The inventory seems to be accessible by third parties - who knows more?

Answer

uFarooq picture uFarooq · Jun 13, 2012

AutoTrader gets its data by

  1. Dealer manually adding the vehicles
  2. Dealers third party services pushing the data to AutoTrader nightly (FTP or Emailed) from services like.
    • website providers / inventory management tools such as AutoJini.com, VinSolutions (now owned by ATC)
    • Lot management companies such as Dealer Specialties, KBB CDMData (these companies come to the dealers lot and take the pictures and then send the data out to website providers, classifieds sites etc.
    • feed processing company like Digital Motor Works.
  3. or AutoTrader is pulling the data from the Dealer Management System like (Reynolds & Reynolds, ADP, Arkona, etc) pull method is mostly used for new cars.

Inventory is normally not accessible by other third parties... however one can always get the data for most dealers in the US via API from Oddle or Vast and Edmunds.

I should also add that you can get a custom crawl of all the data on ATC & cars.com from 80legs.com. This kind of service is used by companies that do pricing analytic for dealers.

You can also try contacting the website providers or the lot management companies and get the data feed from them.

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