Looking for bargains online? If you are a mac user, some websites might be displaying higher prices to you. You might want to re-run that search on a PC.
Just so you all know, I love Macs. I have an iPad and an iMac at home. I’ve even ran ios on my PC machines in the past. However, there’s one thing that online retailers are starting to discover: Mac users are willing to spend more money than PC Users.
At least one website is taking advantage of that information. According to this article I just read on USA Today, Orbitz is displaying higher prices to Mac users than to PC users.
This was pretty interesting information and gave me some pause to think. Any webmaster can tell you the importance of stats. One of the pieces of information that shows up in an analytics dashboard is the type of computer that the visitor is using to surf to your website.
I never gave much thought about this information in the past other than to ensure that my website is working correctly on all the major browers. I didn’t think that some websites might rank search results differently or display different information based on the operating system of the user.
To me, this practice seems a bit questionable. Shouldn’t a search query display the same results to anyone seeking the information?
I personally wouldn’t set up my website to hide information in this manner just to turn a profit. But there may be other people out there who don’t have any qualms about this strategy. It’s just one more area where we need to be extra careful.
The best way to get neutral results is to keep your settings on private browsing. Turn off your cookies. And if you are looking for a bargain, you may want to conduct your search on a PC instead of a Mac.
What do you think? Is this just another PC vs. Mac issue? Should websites be using our information in this way?
Richard is a full time professional, husband, father and blogger juggling all the responsibilities of life and running a blog. Richard enjoys writing about life and online money matters.
