Web scraping: 10 Most Frequently Asked Questions
A new popular method of collecting data is web data scraping. The web contains a wealth of information. Information can benefit you in so many ways, but it can be difficult to collect and organize it in a way that meets all of your requirements. Because of this, there are currently many web crawling tools, as well as data scraping services that make the data extraction process easier.
We will answer the most common questions about data scraping in this blog post.
Specifically, these questions were divided into four sections: general questions, questions about some limitations of data scraping, and questions about the legal aspects of web data scraping and what it can offer your business.
Scraping the Web for Business
Scraping is used by businesses for very specific reasons. One of the main reasons is the lack of API availability. Other reasons include:
As there are no APIs, collaboration with business partners is limited. APIs allow companies to expose the data on their websites in order to expand the market share and enhance sales.
Web scraping allows organizations to create an early go-to-market strategy. By scraping data from other websites, organizations are able to stay updated with the latest trends and strategies.
The aim of web scraping is to collect data so it can be applied in any industry that needs it. For better web scraping, here are the most frequently asked questions by B2B companies and Market researchers.
Questions about Web Data Scraping
How can information be scraped (text, images, video)?
Data is extracted from websites through web scraping. The whole idea behind data crawling is that it copies all the information on a web page for you to use for your own purposes. Web scraping is done using code.
Therefore, it doesn't matter if you scrape text or an image. Using the correct coding, you can easily crawl whatever data you need.
With scraping, what type of reports or analyses can I generate?
By using a web data scraping service, you will receive raw data that has already been formatted and structured. There are too many ways to analyze data and generate projections and reports.
You can use competitor-related data to develop more competitive strategies, for example. You can also use data scraped from different online platforms to generate more leads and boost customer engagement.
Examples include price monitoring, identifying trends, and predicting stock behavior. The data available on the web can be scraped and analyzed to perform all of these tasks.
Which industries do businesses commonly scrape?
Following are the most common industries that benefit from scraping:
Using e-commerce to gather competitive information and customer reviews to build competitive strategies.
The best tours and cheapest tickets can be found at travel agencies.
Media companies - to stay informed of the latest news and trends.
Companies in the real estate industry - scrape data on existing and potential customers to create customer profiles, so that sales specialists can present them with offers.
Crawling limitations: What can be crawled and what can't
What are some ways to prevent getting blocked when scraping a website?
It's not uncommon for websites to implement blocking mechanisms when malicious scraping attacks occur. A large number of data requests will overload the internet server, causing it to crash. Neither of us will benefit from this situation. By preventing this from happening, you can avoid being blocked. Be conservative and gentle. Slow down the scraping process as if you were a real person browsing a website. You can delay two requests, use IP proxies, or use different scraping patterns, for example.
Is it possible to solve CAPTCHA during web scraping?
Previously, CAPTCHA was a nightmare for web scrapers, but it can now be easily solved. During the extraction process, many web scraping tools automatically solve CAPTCHA. There are many CAPTCHA solvers that can be integrated with scraping systems.
Is it possible to extract data from the entire web?
Google, the most popular search engine, can only crawl the surface web, which is a significantly smaller portion. There is no software or bot that can crawl and extract data from the entire web. When undertaking a web scraping project, it is advised to identify a set of web sources or websites that are significant and relevant to your project.
Can You Crawl Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn?
Scraping the web is often used to crawl social media pages, so yes, you can crawl Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The data provided by these platforms is highly valuable to businesses. The robots.txt file prevents automated scraping from them. Despite this, web scraping services can access social media platforms and web scrape data from them as well.
A Legal Look at Web Data Scraping
Is it legal to use scraped data?
Scraped information can only be republished with the consent of the data owner. In any other case, you'll be committing plagiarism, which is illegal. So long as you do not violate the copyrights of the publisher, you are free to use the content however you like.
Because the information that is web scraped from the web page can be viewed by anyone, web scraping is legal. As long as you are able to manually crawl the data, it is not illegal to use coding or order data from a web scraping service. Almost every website allows crawling. You are however limited in how you can use that data by law.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in May of 2018. The purpose of the law is to protect people's personal information, such as their name, phone number, or email address. Businesses are actively using such information for marketing. Now, you need to get the user's consent before you can use their data.
Many websites ask users if they agree to share their data with third-party services for marketing purposes. Therefore, web data scraping services need to take extra precautions, such as GDPR, before engaging in the crawling process.
In some countries, why is data crawling illegal?
It can't be completely illegal to crawl data in a country where internet usage is free. Have you ever copied and pasted something from a website? Then you've done manual web scraping. There are no countries that prohibit it. However, the legal regulations governing the usage of that data differ from country to country.
Web scraping also has an ethical side, which can sometimes cause more issues for people. The crawled data can lead to massive plagiarism and intellectual property theft.
It's not just about legality, but also about ethics. There's no point in making web scraping illegal in the whole country since even government officials sometimes use web scraping.
Is the data inaccessible due to any technical or legal requirements?
If you crawl the website via an API, there are no technical difficulties involved. There shouldn't be any issues if you're crawling a website that has approved the API tool you're using. Other crawling techniques have more technical issues.
If you outsource the work to a web data scraping service, you need not worry about the technical aspect of web crawling. The best service provider will always have a team of professional scrappers who will take care of all the technical difficulties. It's also important to note that professionals working for a good web scraping service know very well all the legal requirements. In this case, you can sit back and relax before your data arrives if you hire a decent web scraping service.
Here's the bottom line
Crawling can be used to extract data about a website for any purpose. The Crawlbase Crawling API extracts details about titles, images, keywords and other linked pages. This indexing is what allows a search engine to return relevant results for a search phrase or keyword that you enter.