You don’t have to be a technophobe to be intimidated by the wild and woolly Web, with its robots, spiders and RSS feeds.

But these advanced tools are the key to getting some of the best deals in online shopping, especially when you need it most—during the holidays. To make things easier, many of these shopping sites now mask the mechanics of what they do behind comforting names like Ben’s Bargains, Fat Wallet or WinesTilSoldOut.

The point is that it’s hard to find one site that always has the best deals. On any given day, the best deal on a camera might be at Amazon or it might be at a no-name site you’ve never heard of. Or the biggest discount on a jacket might be at Eddie Bauer or maybe on Overstock.

So here are some of the sites that use web technology and social networking to give you a good deal at any point during this busy holiday season.

• FatWallet is one of the best-known deal-finding sites—the idea is to keep the money in your wallet. Because it’s so popular, many of the best deals surface in the community forums—as in the Hot Deals forum.
  

• Shopzilla, formerly known as Bizrate, includes user ratings and feedback in search results. It finds great deals while giving consumers information on the vendors offering the deals. The feedback helps when you have to choose between two merchants.
  

• PriceGrabber.com finds good deals and also provides great product information, including not only user reviews, but expert reviews from various publications, such as PC World.
  

• Slickdeals.net gets high marks from online shoppers for its steady stream of deals in blog-like format. While the front page has great deals, users also encourage looking at the thrift-conscious forums.

• DealsPlus integrates social bookmarking features as in Digg or Delicious so that the most popular deals rise to the top. This is a good site for those who are fans of user-driven content.
  

There are numerous sites that look for deals in electronics, where savings can be significant. One of the more popular ones:

• Ben’s Bargains has some heavy duty electronic gear, from computers to X-boxes, with a sprinkling of clothes, tools and other products.

If you’re tired of hardware, software and peripherals and just want something soft to wear by the fireplace, try:

• Delight.com has clothing and accessories for men, women and kids, and more mundane products like kitchen tools and other household goods. Women looking for deals on clothes can go to the Gifts for Gals tab.
  

• SHEfinds.com, as its name suggests, is even more specialized, with searches for women’s clothes and accessories and deals on those products. “What to wear, where to get it” is the tagline for this site founded by online shopping expert Michelle Madhok.
  

With a little experimentation, you should find which site suits your needs best. If you don’t want to spend the time flitting from site to site and know what kind of deal you’re looking for, you can try this site:

• Spendfish.com searches Amazon’s site for the best deals. You can set up a tailor-made RSS feed for exactly what you want, say “coffee makers on sale for 40% off or more, and less than $100,” and it will pop into your feed reader when available.
  

For a different kind of shopping experience, you can try a site that just offers one steeply discounted product each day:

• Woot pioneered the concept “one day, one product.” It posts its sale offer at midnight each night and takes orders until sold out.
  

And there’s one fun site that applies that concept to a single product:

• WineTillSoldOut posts a wine at a 30-70% discount and takes orders until they’re sold out. The only caveat here is that not every state will allow direct delivery of wine to your home (16 states currently don’t allow direct shipments, so check the shipping tab).