// the monid blog

Notes from the agent-native web.

104 posts · page 1 of 5

How Do You Find Prospects Running Google Ads?
Ads intelligenceSep 8, 2026

How Do You Find Prospects Running Google Ads?

One landing page carried 1,537 distinct ad creatives. That count, not traffic, separates a company testing paid search from one committed to it.

Google Shopping API: The Lowest Price Is a Different Product
EcommerceSep 8, 2026

Google Shopping API: The Lowest Price Is a Different Product

One search returned the same headphones from 22.99 to 399.99. The cheapest was a weekly rental. Sorting by price picks the row that is not the product.

Two Reddit Scrapers, One Query, Four Posts in Common
Social dataSep 8, 2026

Two Reddit Scrapers, One Query, Four Posts in Common

The complaint is that a Reddit scraper returns irrelevant posts. We measured it. Results were relevant, and two providers disagreed on six of ten.

Salary Data API: Three Sources, Three Different Numbers
Sales & enrichmentSep 8, 2026

Salary Data API: Three Sources, Three Different Numbers

Indeed says the median software engineer earns 136k. Levels.fyi says 298k. Both are right, and the field that explains it is the sample count.

Telegram Channel Data Without a Bot Token
Social dataSep 8, 2026

Telegram Channel Data Without a Bot Token

Telegram publishes view counts no other platform gives you. They arrive as 926K and 24.2M, already rounded, and they are lifetime totals not velocity.

Insider Trading API: What Form 4 Data Actually Tells You
ProductSep 7, 2026

Insider Trading API: What Form 4 Data Actually Tells You

A director sold 1,848,501 shares for $410,843,671. The filing arrived two days later, and that lag is the most important field in the response.

Is There an API for PitchBook Data?
Sales & enrichmentSep 7, 2026

Is There an API for PitchBook Data?

No. And the free alternatives return which rounds a company raised and what type each was, but not how much, when, or at what valuation.

How to Monitor Competitor Prices Automatically
EcommerceSep 7, 2026

How to Monitor Competitor Prices Automatically

Two sources agreed the price was 54.99. One also said the list price was 79.99. Store only the first and you cannot tell a price cut from a discount.

Prediction Market Data: Matching Kalshi and Polymarket
ProductSep 7, 2026

Prediction Market Data: Matching Kalshi and Polymarket

The same question is worded differently on each venue and priced in different units. A matching endpoint returned 20 pairs at 100% confidence.

Software Review Data: What a G2 or Capterra API Returns
ProductSep 7, 2026

Software Review Data: What a G2 or Capterra API Returns

Capterra returned 25 reviews split into pros and cons. A niche product returned zero. G2 was blocked on both days we tried, five days apart.

Are Instagram Follower and Engagement Trackers Accurate?
Social dataSep 3, 2026

Are Instagram Follower and Engagement Trackers Accurate?

Two providers disagreed by 2 followers out of 104 million. The same 12 posts gave 0.096% or 0.334% engagement depending on one undocumented choice.

Bounce Rates and Spam Traps When Validating an Email List
Sales & enrichmentSep 3, 2026

Bounce Rates and Spam Traps When Validating an Email List

A verifier returned twelve fields for three addresses. None of them was spam_trap, and none could be. Here is what verification fixes and what it cannot.

How to Rate Limit Calls to a Third Party API
ProductSep 3, 2026

How to Rate Limit Calls to a Third Party API

Six real failure responses collected over three days. Only one of them meant slow down, and telling them apart matters more than any backoff algorithm.

How to Scrape LinkedIn Without Getting Your Account Banned
Sales & enrichmentSep 3, 2026

How to Scrape LinkedIn Without Getting Your Account Banned

The ban risk comes from tools that drive your logged-in session. Three endpoints returned profile data from a URL alone, with no cookie involved.

How to Stop Depending on One Scraping Vendor
ProductSep 3, 2026

How to Stop Depending on One Scraping Vendor

Ten provider failures in three days, all while doing other work. None was a bad vendor. The defence is a second route you can reach without a rewrite.

Extract Pricing and Free Trial Information From Websites
ProductSep 2, 2026

Extract Pricing and Free Trial Information From Websites

One endpoint returned four plans, numeric amounts and a free_trial_available flag. It also disclosed that a model read the page, which changes everything.

Find All URLs on a Domain: Why the Sitemap Route Usually Stops
Search & RAGSep 2, 2026

Find All URLs on a Domain: Why the Sitemap Route Usually Stops

Four domains, one sitemap endpoint. Three returned an index and no URL count at all. A sitemap gives you a map of a site, not a list of its pages.

MLS Real Estate API: What You Get When You Cannot Get MLS
Local dataSep 2, 2026

MLS Real Estate API: What You Get When You Cannot Get MLS

MLS access needs a licence and a broker. Two public sources returned 40 listings and 48 agents with phones. What they carry, and what they do not.

Simply Wall St GraphQL API: What Returns Fundamentals Instead
ProductSep 2, 2026

Simply Wall St GraphQL API: What Returns Fundamentals Instead

There is no public Simply Wall St GraphQL API. An endpoint that does return fundamentals gave 26 line items across six periods, and named its own source.

Amazon ASIN Scraper: What to Do When It Returns Nothing
EcommerceSep 1, 2026

Amazon ASIN Scraper: What to Do When It Returns Nothing

A purpose-built ASIN endpoint returned 26 fields and zero values for two valid ASINs. A generic extractor read the same page fine. Assert on values.

Datacenter Proxies vs Residential: What Each One Actually Fixes
ProductSep 1, 2026

Datacenter Proxies vs Residential: What Each One Actually Fixes

A real residential IP with a real Chrome user agent still got 403 from two sites. The IP type was not the constraint. What each type does fix.

Extracting Leadership Contact Information Without Paying to Look
Sales & enrichmentSep 1, 2026

Extracting Leadership Contact Information Without Paying to Look

Hunter's multi-domain search returned 404,695 matching executives for free, names masked and titles visible. You pay only for the addresses you choose.

Puppeteer Extra Plugin Stealth: Check the Release Date First
ProductSep 1, 2026

Puppeteer Extra Plugin Stealth: Check the Release Date First

The stealth plugin last shipped in March 2023. Puppeteer shipped last week. What that gap means, and what scrapy-playwright does differently.

C# Web Scraping: Keep HtmlAgilityPack, Drop the Fetch
Search & RAGAug 31, 2026

C# Web Scraping: Keep HtmlAgilityPack, Drop the Fetch

The .NET parsing stack was never the problem. What breaks a C# scraper is the request leaving your server, and that half is not a language question.