7 Easy Steps for Scraping Large Scale Websites

Let’s say you’re building a great app prototype that’s off to a good start or could do. As with any application, the core of this application is data, and you use data from a small number of websites to develop your application. Once your app is hit and trending, you need to start data extraction using web scraping, which requires a massive scale of up to 500 websites. If you want to do web scraping on a large scale, you need to make sure that the tool you use for web scraping is more secure.

If you want to do web scraping on a large scale, but you are sure that you will face many difficulties while doing it, it will make the most sense to seek the help of an expert. This is because the problems that arise in large-scale web scraping will endanger the existence of your application and organization in the future. Although companies can easily do small-scale web scraping, it would be logical to seek help from an application or expert for large-scale data scraping.

At Scrape.do we will be on your side with any large-scale scraping and ensure that you extract all the data you need for your app or website. Although we offer the best price among our competitors in the industry, we will strive to get you paid for every penny you pay. Our expert team with years of experience is looking forward to working with you. All you have to do is contact us. What else are you waiting for?

If You Want to Do Web Scraping On A Large Scale Take These 7 Steps: You Can’t Be Stopped Anymore!

If you want to do a large-scale web scraping, first keep in mind that you cannot do this large-scale scraping manually, store or process it. You will need a solid environment to use web scraping where you can run your scrapers on multiple websites at the same time and extract data. If you want to do your large-scale web scraping without being stopped, without fear, you should follow the steps we have listed for you.

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To briefly mention these steps, we can say that creating a scanning path, using proxy services, using a database, data parsing, detecting and blocking anti-bot systems, using CAPTCHA solver services, and performing regular maintenance. Let’s take a closer look at these steps:

1. Creating a Scan Path

Creating a crawl path, the most important part of large-scale web scraping is a step that should never be skipped. By using web browsing services, you can find the features that distinguish your business from other businesses and put them ahead of them, as well as discover the good and bad sides of your competitors. When you create the crawl path, which can also be called a URL library from which all data is extracted, you will have some URLs that are important to your business and need to be scrapped.

2. Using Proxy Services

If you want to scan content on a large scale, the most important thing you should do is to take advantage of Proxy IP services. When you use these services, your proxy IPs will be blocked, and you can apply IP rotation for this. You should note that the Proxy services you will prefer are among the Proxy services that can request restrictions and manage your sessions.

Almost all companies that offer web scraping services give utmost importance to Proxy management to eliminate any confusion that may arise in Proxy management. When you get help from a company that provides a proxy service, you can give importance to content analysis, not proxy services. You can also get great results if you can use a good proxy in addition to the right strategy and web scraping knowledge.

3. Creating a Database

If you want to do a large-scale web scraping, you should be ready to create a database to store your verified data somewhere. When you parse small volumes, a single spreadsheet will do, and you don’t need a large database. However, if you are planning to do a large-scale web scraping, you need to use a powerful and large database. You can create a database using storage options such as MySQL, cloud storage, and MongoDB, which you can adjust according to your frequency and parsing speed. You also need a robust database for the security of the data you obtain, so you must be prepared to spend time and money on maintenance.

4. Parsing Data

A data parser is used in data parsing, which is a process for transforming data into an actively usable and more understandable form. Although it may seem easy to create a data parser, you must be prepared to deal with several challenges to protect your data parser. You will struggle to adapt to different page formats, and your development team will have to constantly struggle with this. While web scraping was more difficult, which previously required labor, resources, and time, it is now possible to perform large-scale data collection using technology and automation.

5. Detecting and Blocking Anti-Bot Systems

Just as you have to put more effort into scraping data from complex websites, scraping a defensive website will be extremely difficult. Today’s major websites use anti-bot measures to isolate bots from visitors and track bots to protect them from being scraped. Due to such anti-bot measures, the performance of the browsers you use will decrease and anti-bot measures will cause web scraping to be performed incorrectly.

If you want to get the results you want from browsers without any problems, you need to design browsers against them and take advantage of reverse engineering practices using anti-bot measures. If some websites have noticed that you are a bot and have banned you, you should check if geo-blocking is enabled on the title or website. If you take advantage of the built-in Proxy services, you can still continue web scraping once the website’s data center disables your proxies.

6. Using CAPTCHA Resolving Services

Another important thing to do is to check if you have a CAPTCHA solver service before you start web scraping. If you do not have a CAPTCHA solver service, you can reduce your chance of getting CAPTCHA by making use of Proxy types, regional proxies, and Javascript methods to avoid CAPTCHA. If you have tried everything and still get CAPTCHA, you have no choice but to use third-party CAPTCHA solver services. Feel free to use a CAPTCHA solver service.

7. Making Regular Adjustments

If you are using a web scraper, you should remember that you need to periodically make adjustments to keep your web scraper active. If there is even a small change in the target websites, you should remember that you need to make a large-scale change for this. If you don’t make changes in line with changes in target websites, your scrapers will provide invalid data and will be crushed by new website changes. If you want to overcome this, you need notifications that can alert you when a problem arises. You also need a support team so that issues can be resolved through human intervention or custom code distribution. You also need a certain amount of time for the scrapers to repair themselves.

If you want to scrape data on a large scale, you must find ways to reduce the request cycle time and improve the performance of browsers. In order to find these methods, you will need to improve, perhaps upgrade, your hardware and proxy management.

How To Build Large-Scale Web Scrapers: 4 Important Tips for Building Large-Scale Web Scrapers!

If you want to create a suitable web scraper for yourself, there are some points to consider. If you are going to create a web scraper, you first need to determine what type of online information you are after and from which websites you want to retrieve data. Since websites are constantly becoming more complex and this complexity changes wildly, it is not possible to find a permanent solution for quickly and seamlessly collecting data from every website. The more complex a website, the more complex your web scraper will have to deal with. That’s why you need to adapt to the tips we share with you in this section.

1. You Should Start by Choosing The Right Web Scraping Framework

If you want to start building a web scraper, the first thing you need to do is choose the right framework. If you choose the right framework, your web scrapers will be long-lasting and extremely flexible. The best decision you can make in this regard would be to build your web scraper on an open-source framework. If you save your web scraper on an open source framework, you get a lot of flexibility and at the same time, you have the ability to do the highest level of customization. It is also possible that you are one of the users who has worked with this tool and adapted it in interesting ways.

If you want to find an open source framework to build your web scraper, let’s share with you that the most widely used framework currently is Scrapy. However, depending on what your operating system is and what programming language you want to use, you can find other great open-source frameworks. You can perform a versatile scraping using the Python scripting language and Python is the best scripting language in this field. However, just as there are alternatives to Scrapy, there are also Python alternatives that you can prefer when the websites you will scrape have a more complex structure. One of these alternatives is Javascript.

To summarize this section, if you are doing or planning to do large-scale web scraping, you will need to check beforehand where and when you will do it. If you use a closed framework, it will be extremely difficult to control your web scraping process. In addition, there is always a risk that your web scrapers will get stuck in a position that you cannot move, which should be avoided.

2. You Should Keep Your Web Scrapers Consistently Fresh

If you want to put your web scrapers together, the most important thing to consider is how easy it will be if you need to replace them later. These changes will vary depending on what your goals are. Sometimes a simple change and a fundamental change may be required, but this is extremely important and your success or failure may depend entirely on that change. After all, while websites are constantly changing and they would be great for a constant flow of information, for strict logic web scrapers this can be a real nightmare. If the rules change, strict web scrapers will report inaccurate and outdated data.

In some cases, even web scrapers will crash completely. You can also disappear without any information from web scraping and need to spend a lot of time figuring out what it is. If you want good results and you will need to adjust your web scrapers regularly to keep them working at their best, this should be at least once a month.

3. You Should Test Your Data Regularly

You should routinely test your data to make sure you are reporting accurately. If you don’t control the quality of your data, your web scrapers can be outdated, and functionally useless for months, and you won’t notice any of it. It is extremely important to check your data regularly, even for small-scale transactions. Incredibly important even for small-scale web scraping, it’s not hard to imagine how important this process can be for large-scale operations.

If you are sure that you are not getting your data properly and you want to fix it, of course, you can, there is a way to reduce the time you have to spend. But the important thing is not to fix a web scraping tool after it breaks, the important thing is that your web scraping tool should be designed in such a way that it can always get quality information. For this, you should develop some criteria that will ensure the quality of your data and set up a system to report them.

4. You Should Be Careful with Storage

If you are sure that you are getting your data correctly and of high quality and you can get your data quickly, you should find a storage solution and start using it so that nothing goes to waste. If you are using a web scraper for a small-scale project, a simple spreadsheet will suffice, but if you want to run a large-scale project, the data you collect will take up more space than a spreadsheet. You should have tools sorted to properly store this data. Although databases come in many forms, you don’t need to search other databases if you are looking for the most suitable database, if you have a large amount of distributed data, a NoSQL database is the best place to choose.

Need to scrape? We can do that. Scrape.do is a web scraping service that provides high-quality web scraping and data extraction from any website at affordable prices. We provide information about every single website, so you know exactly what kind of data you’re getting prior to placing your order. Our team of experts is ready to help you with any web scraping project. We have extensive experience in scraping websites and extracting data, so you can be sure that we’ll do an excellent job.

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