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It won’t be exaggerating to say that today we’re living in a data-powered world. Whether it is increasing awareness among people or enabling businesses to scale new heights, data is at the core of all the action.
But even though data is such a crucial component, the process of data gathering remains confusing, complicated, and time-consuming. Data is either unavailable for downloads or lacks complete access and usage.
That’s when web scraping comes into the picture. It simplifies data gathering, access, and usage from public websites for you to stress-freely continue your projects, surveys, and analysis.
Wondering how? Let us walk you through web scraping specifics. From discussing its use cases to understanding how to scrape a website, we’d cover it all. Keep reading!
» What is Web Scraping?
By definition, web scraping is a process through which you can extract data from websites automatically. Through this technique, it becomes possible to gather data in an unstructured format, like HTML, and convert the same into a standard, structured form, for instance, a spreadsheet or a database.
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Web scraping typically includes two elements: the scraper and the crawler. Think of a crawler as a bot. This bot follows links to navigate the Internet. That’s how it visits and accesses websites. The scraper, in particular, is developed for information retrieval from websites and present it to you in a usable format.
To make this entire process easier, there are many web scraping software and scraping tools available in the market.
» Is Website Scraping Illegal?
Contrary to popular belief, website scraping is not illegal. In fact, data scraping isn’t equal to data stealing.
Recommended: Effective Techniques for Data Leak Prevention
However, web scraping does have its own share of guidelines and limitations.
You can scrape the web to gather data that’s publicly available. Many business organizations rely on data scraping for revenue generation. Take Reddit, for example. Until recently, this globally popular social network allowed the scraping of its platform through API. For free. Not anymore though. It has now introduced charges for the same.
Scraping, thus, is typically legal as long as it doesn’t violate the terms of service of the website you’re scraping. It is legal if it does not breach applicable laws, including data protection laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or copyright laws.
Data scraping must refrain from gathering data that comes under personal data or is protected under intellectual property (IP) laws.
What’s interesting is that many social networks discourage scrapers to limit data access. Take LinkedIn, for instance. It prohibits the usage of any scraping tools or scraping software to scrape data or profiles on its platform without their consent.
And it’s not just LinkedIn. Many online platforms discourage or steer clear of scraping through various means. Some of these methods include:
- Regularly modifying HTML
- Using Captcha
- Using a rate limiter to restrict web page access requests
- Using robots.txt file to set crawling permissions
» What are the Ways to Approach Website Scraping?
When it comes to scraping the web, there are multiple ways to choose from. These methods, which vary in terms of complexity, are divided into three main categories depending on the coding level required: high-code scraping, low-code scraping, and no-code scraping.
Let’s look at these scraping methods in brief:
› High-code web scraping
- Headless browsers: Tools like Puppeteer and Selenium help with web browser automation for scraping dynamic content generated by JavaScript.
- JavaScript: You can rely on the Axios library to make HTTP requests and the Cheerio library to parse HTML while using the Node.js environment.
- Scrapy: If you’re dealing with complex data scraping tasks, Scrapy is a perfect choice. It’s a Python library that provides robust features, especially for large projects. While experts can fairly navigate Scrapy, it can be a challenge for novices.
- Web crawling frameworks: Advanced frameworks like Apache Nutch prove to be useful when you’ve to scrape the web on a large scale.
› Low-code web scraping
- APIs: Many websites offer structured Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that let you scrape data. All you need is basic knowledge of HTTP requests, as well as data formats like XML and JSON.
- Beautiful Soup: Beautiful Soup is a Python package that requires minimal coding knowledge. You can use it for one-time HTML scraping tasks.
› No-code web scraping
- Manual copy-pasting: The easiest method of extracting data from any website is going the old-school way of manually copying and pasting the data you want in your document.
- Browser extensions: You can use browser extensions, such as Data Scraper or Web Scraper, to carry out automated data extraction. Doing so scrapes data in a patterned, targeted way from your browser directly.
- RSS feeds: RSS feeds consisting of structured data lists are offered by some websites for simpler, no-code data scraping.
- Browser developer tools: Modern browsers contain numerous built-in tools that enable you to not only inspect elements on a webpage but also copy and extract data and source code.
- Data mining tools: Software like RapidMiner and KNIME provide a comprehensive set of features and interfaces that facilitate easier data scraping.
» What are Web Scraping Use Cases?
If you’re picking your brains about who uses web scraping and why, don’t be surprised when we tell you that businesses across sectors do. Data scraping not only helps in strategizing robust business plans but also contributes to improving everyday organizational operations.
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Here are a few ways organizations use web scraping:
1) Lead generation
Businesses across industries carry out web scraping to collate contact information about leads and potential customers. The focus is on retrieving details, such as phone numbers and email addresses.
2) Price comparison and monitoring
From small e-stores to established online brands, organizations leverage data scraping to keep track of the products and pricing strategies of their competitors. They analyze product reviews and prices to stay ahead of the curve. It helps them price and market their products effectively. And keep them in line with the latest market trends.
3) Listings in real estate industry
Companies in the real estate industry use screen scraping to collect data from multiple property websites. The aim is to get accurate details on property listings, market trends, and pricing.
4) Stock market analysis
With web scraping of the stock market and finance websites, stock market professionals and financial analysts collate precise information on the latest company news, financial statements, and stock prices. The motto is to conduct accurate financial analysis and market predictions for informed investment decisions.
5) Job board tracking
Whether it’s recruitment agencies or internal HR departments, recruiters scrape the web as well to monitor job listings and find their ideal candidates.
6) Social media marketing (SMM) & search engine optimization (SEO)
Marketers across the globe indulge in scraping social media websites to gather insights about their performance and user behavior. From tracking brand mentions to monitoring consumer preferences and sentiments, the data enables better strategies for marketing and customer experience.
And it’s not just social media. SEO professionals, too, carry out data scraping. They scrape SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) to track keyword performance and conduct competitor analysis.
7) Threat intelligence
One of the crucial uses of web scraping tools is to gather substantial data to manage, mitigate, and avoid cyber attack risks.
8) Data integration
Another vital use case of a web scraper tool is for tech developers. They scrape sites to power their applications with integrated data. This is the way large language models and AI gets their training data for detailed and near-accurate output.
» Conclusion
Web scraping is a powerful way to gather and use critical data, regardless of your industry. Whether you want to improve your lead generation strategies or track product sentiment, pricing, and market trends, data scraping can simplify things for you. It can help your business stay relevant and ahead of your competition.
However, it is imperative that you understand the limitations, compliance, and guidelines to scrape the web in an ethical manner. When used correctly, adhering to the applicable laws, web scraping can open up new opportunities for your business, fueling innovation.
