What Kind of Information Can You Get with Web Scraping?

In this article, we will tell you what web scraping is, what it takes to do web scraping, how web scrapers work, what types of web scrapers are, why you should use web scraping, how websites are protected from web scraping, what areas web scraping is used in, web scraping We talked about what information you can get with it and why you should choose Scrape.do for a web scraper.

With the web scraping method used to obtain any data collection on websites, it becomes possible to have unique information in different fields. You can access the data in the area you want with web scraping, which you can do in all areas you want.

At Scrape.do, we are working day and night to ensure that you defeat all anti-web scraping technologies and do not face any obstacles in web scraping. It’s more valuable to us that you get the best service and can do web scraping in the best way. How about contacting us to become our business partner?

What is Web Scraping?

While web scraping, a strategy for extracting large amounts of interpretable data from websites, can be done manually, it is more sensible to do it automatically. Most of the data obtained by this method is saved in spreadsheets or a file in any format so that it can be interpreted later. There are multiple methods you can use to scrape data from websites. If we talk about these methods, we can briefly say online web scraper services, using certain APIs and writing code for web scraping. Although you can access structured data on large websites using the API, many websites do have unstructured data. You should consider using web scraper services for data on all websites, as it would be most logical to use a web scraper to access data on these websites with a lot of unstructured data.

What is Required for Web Scraping?

If you want to scrape data from a website and save it to a file for later reinterpretation, you will need certain hardware and software. We can also say that web scraping basically needs two different parts, the browser and the scraper. The browser’s job is to browse the web to monitor URL links and search for data when needed. A web scraper, on the other hand, is responsible for extracting data from websites accessed by the browser as quickly and accurately as possible. Let us also tell you that the web scrapers you use can vary depending on the size and importance of your project.

How Web Scrapers Work

It is highly recommended to create a URL link list if you want web scrapers tasked with extracting all data from predetermined websites or specific data on a user’s desired topics to work better, you should also specify what the data is. Let us explain this situation with an example. You’re a sterling silver necklace business and want to scrape data from an Amazon page for reviews, but if what you want is customer reviews and you don’t want product information, specifying it will help speed up your web scraper.

As we explained in the paragraph above, the URL addresses of the website to be scraped are listed first before a website starts to be scraped. Immediately after, your web scraper will load all the HTML codes of these websites, if you have an advanced web scraper, it is also possible for your scraper to load CSS and JavaScript codes. After this installation, your web scraper obtains the information you want from the codes in HTML or other software languages and saves it in a file in another format. The saved file must be viewable offline and user interpretable.

What Are the Types of Web Scraper?

Web scrapers can be classified into six groups namely Self-Building Web Scrapers, Pre-built Web Scrapers, Browser Extension Scrapers, Software Web Scrapers, Cloud Web Scrapers, and Native Web Scrapers. Let’s take a look at these web scrapers item by item:

If you have advanced programming knowledge to write it yourself, you can have Self-Building Web Scrapers. So you can write software to create a web scraper. If you want extra features in the web scraper you will create, you should start developing your knowledge.
Prebuilt Web Scrapers are web scrapers available on the internet that you can easily download and run. These scrapers also have some features that you can customize.
Web Scrapers with Browser Extension, which are added to your browser and can be run with a small button, are very limited, although they are easy to use scrapers. In other words, it can extract the data on the page it is in, but cannot extract the data on a different website. Let’s also add that web scrapers with this structure do not have many advanced features.
Software Web Scrapers are one of the essential web scrapers that you can download and install on your computer. Since these scrapers are integrated with your computer, they can not only scrape any website you want but also scrape multiple websites at the same time. However, let’s also say that this type of web scraper has a more complex use than other web scrapers.
Cloud-Based Web Scrapers, which you can easily obtain from websites that sell or rent web scrapers on the Internet, work over an off-site server and this server is generally called the cloud. We can unequivocally say that these web scrapers do not take advantage of computer resources. Normally you cannot do anything while your computer is dealing with web scraping, but if you use Cloud Based Web Scrapers you can also use your computer while web scraping because Cloud Web Scrapers do not use your computer hardware.
Native Web Scrapers, unlike Cloud-Based Web Scrapers, are web scrapers that work integrated into your computer and these web scrapers can prevent you from taking action on your computer. If the web scraper you are using requires too much CPU and RAM, you will not be able to do the things you want to do on your computer. Local Web Scrapers are not a very popular idea, as this can negatively affect your computer and shorten its lifespan.

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Why Should You Use Web Scraping?

With web scraping, you can automatically obtain data, monitor competitors and have insights about competitors, have unique and rich datasets, organize the data you obtain effectively. Let’s take a closer look at these advantages:

You Can Automatically Extract Data Using Web Scrapers

If you are using a properly working web scraper, you can automatically scrape data from websites you want and save this data to a file for later interpretation. This automated process will make both you and your colleagues’ work time more efficient, meaning you’ll be able to engage in more creative work rather than hours of data collection. In addition to being automatic software, web scrapers are very fast and have a much larger data collection than a single human can obtain, in a very short time. You can also give random commands to web scraping software, such as clicking on random places or watching videos, to make it look like a human.

Monitor Competitors and Get Insights About Competitors

With the web scrapers, you can use to automatically scrape the data on the internet and interpret the data you have obtained later, you can research the prices of rival companies, monitor the marketing activities of rival companies and your own company, and quickly conduct market research about your industry. You will be able to easily interpret and analyze your competitors and the data you obtain, thanks to web scrapers that automatically download this important business data you obtain. Moreover, as a result of this analysis, you will have the opportunity to take a closer look at the activities of rival companies and by using this opportunity, you will be able to make better commercial decisions for your company.

Get Unique and Rich Datasets

Most websites are filled with rich texts, videos, images, visual content, tables, and numerical data. In fact, according to one of the latest studies, it is known that there are more than six billion internet pages in total. Naturally, you can easily identify the websites that are suitable for your target from such a large and wide knowledge base, set your website scraper specifically, and have your own dataset from the data you get as a result of web scraping. You can analyze this data set you have later and make the right decisions by taking advantage of this rich knowledge.

Effectively Manage the Data You Capture

You have seen that many people go to related websites and copy data from websites to documents in a different format, perhaps you even used this while researching. In fact, what these people do is also called web scraping, but this method of web scraping is not recommended as it takes too much time. By using web scrapers, you can get the data you want from more than one website at the same time and collect the data you get correctly. If you want to scan and analyze the data you have obtained later and make an analysis on it, it would be most logical to collect them in a database. Since you automatically collect the data you need, your company and the people working in your company will not need to copy and paste the information, these people will be able to turn to more creative work.

How Are Websites Protected From Web Scrapers?

Many websites use anti-web scraping technologies because some of the web scrapers are malicious, can slow down websites by making high requests to websites, and damage websites’ servers. However, most of these technologies have become ineffective because the scrapers have not kept up with the evolving technology. For example, we can say that some web scrapers disguise themselves as humans. There are some methods that a website uses to protect it from web scraping, and these methods can be described as follows:

When web-scraping is done, thousands of requests are usually sent from a single computer, if the number of requests sent to your website is higher than what would normally happen, there is a good chance that the requests are being made automatically. If it is understood that the number of requests from a computer is higher than normal, the access of that computer to the website can be blocked, and the methods of preventing access are IP ban or marking the IP address as suspicious.
In the HTTP protocol, which is a stateless protocol by nature, requests will provide completely accurate information to the IP address to which they are sent. So if you are using the HTTP protocol, the data on your website is scrapable for web scraping, there is no encryption involved. Some websites use login-required software to detect and block scrapers.
While the maintenance fees of web scrapers are not expensive, web scrapers do not change very often, meaning that whenever a website changes, the web scraper becomes unable to scrape that content. For this, many websites constantly change the HTML code that the website has and thus prevent web scraping.

What Are Web Scrapers Used For?

You can use web scrapers to scrape data from the internet to prepare property listings, browse industry statistics and make predictions based on statistics, compare shopping sites, generate leads, analyze data, do academic research. Let’s take a look at what web scraping does in these areas:

Many people and real estate agents working in the real estate industry can use web scraping to obtain information about properties to be sold or leased and to store this information in a database. Property descriptions, which you can easily find on real estate sites, are data obtained by real estate companies by web scraping.
All companies that aim to grow more and want to work on this need sector statistics and predictions about the events in the sector. Web scraping is used to get insights and statistics for this industry.
Since the number of people shopping online and the number of businesses selling online is increasing day by day, there are too many of the same products in the market, and the prices of the products are almost unique. In this case, if you want to buy and sell products at a more affordable price, you should compare shopping sites, and you can easily do this with web scraping.
Lead generation, which is a very popular web scraping use case, is a method for generating leads. To put it briefly, many companies access user data from the internet and communicate directly with these users and try to persuade users to buy products from their companies.
If you want to extract data from any website in any domain and analyze that data by seeing it in a spreadsheet, you should use web scraping. With web scraping, which is one of the best ways to access data in any field you want, you will have more data than you could ever imagine.While web scraping is often used to scrape prices from websites, many people who conduct large research prefer to do academic research and save time with web scraping.