MERCHANDISE RETRIEVING SERVER FOR RETRIEVING IN CROSS- REFERENCE MERCHANDISE INFORMATION OF MANY ELECTRONIC SHOPS OPERATED ON INTERNET AND NOTIFYING RETRIEVAL CLIENT

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To acquire merchandise information by retrieving an electronic shop server in cross-reference without depending on the format of a Web page. SOLUTION: This merchandise retrieving server for retrieving in cross- reference the merchandise information of many electronic shops through the Internet and notifying a retrieval client of the merchandise information, relates the location of a Web page exhibited by each electronic shop to the merchandise description structure of the Web page to store them, also relates query contents written by the computer of the retrieval client to the mail address of the retrieval client to store them in a query storing part, examines the Web page exhibited by each electronic shop server on the basis of the merchandise description structure, prepares a regular type of e-mail in which the location of the Web page is written in its text when prescribed merchandise relation information written at the prescribed position of the page coincides with the query contents, and sends the e-mail to an e-mail address corresponding to the query contents.