eb scraping also known as data scraping represents one of the most efficient ways to extract data from various websites. It is an automated technique that
allows users to gather and later organize the information taken from the web in order to make those details valuable for marketing, finance, and research industries.
Usually, businesses choose to use different web scraping tools in order to keep track of all the rival's prices and analyze the market trends to see what is most likely to work best. While some businesses are doing the data scraping process manually, the most used way to gather different information is to use web scraping tools because they are less expensive and can provide large amounts of data in less time.
How Does It Work?
The data scraping process represents extracting data from various websites using automated web scraping tools. First, the instant data scraper will receive one or more URLs that are loaded before starting the entire process. This data scraping process begins by sending the HTTP request to the website that is analyzed.
Of course, the website will respond to the HTML code because it is the same as users open the webpage by themselves. So, all the structured data are stored in the HTML code, from where they are gathered according to the specific request and organized into text, images, or links.
It should be mentioned that those web scraping tools that are powered by more advanced technologies are able to analyze the entire website with all the CSS and Javascript elements.
After the data scraping process is completed, all the information is stored in a database, CSV, or JSON, to be further analyzed.
Common Uses Of Web Scraping
Data scraping is used across various industries mostly for data collection and analysis:
- Market research & E-commerce - businesses usually are focused on collecting the competitor’s pricing details along with customer reviews or even the industry trends, in order to maintain their position in the e-commerce market.
- Lead generation - in this case, the data scraping process is used to gather contact information about the potential customers and later build sales prospect lists.
- SEO - here, the web scraping tools are focused on finding trending keywords, backlinks opportunities, and also topics that are trending, so businesses can improve their search engine optimization strategies.
- Finance - in finance, investors are trying to collect and analyze the stock market data, including cryptocurrency prices and even the financial news in order to make more informed decisions in investments.
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What Are The Most Popular Web Scraping Tools?
While Python is the most popular programming language, it has various data scraping tools such as BeautifulSoup or Scrapy, which is a powerful scraping framework.
On the other hand, the non-programmers have the option to use web scraping tools such as Octoparse, or WebHarvy because they offer more user-friendly interfaces that allow users to collect data without coding.
Keep in mind that even if all these data scraping tools are powerful, they must be used in an ethical way. Some websites use usually a file such as “robots.txt” which is responsible for outlining which web pages can be analyzed and which not. However, scraping various personal or even copyrighted data without the website's permission can have serious legal consequences.
By
Adam Brown
•
February 28, 2025 9:15 AM
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