How Easily Can You Extract Data From Web

With tech advancements taking the entire world by a storm, every sector is undergoing massive transformations. As far as the business arena is concerned, the rise of big data and data analytic is playing a crucial part in operations. Big data and data analysis is the best way to identify customer interests. Businesses can gain crystal clear insights into consumers’ preferences, choices, and purchase behaviours, and that’s what leads to unmatched business success. So, it’s here that we come across a crucial question. How do enterprises and organizations leverage data to gain crucial insights into consumer preferences? Well, data extraction and mining are the two significant processes in this context. Let’s take a look at what data extraction means as a process.

Decoding data extraction

Businesses across the globe are trying their best to retrieve crucial data. But, what is it that’s helping them do that? It’s here that the concept of data extraction comes into the picture. Let’s begin with a functional definition of this concept. According to formal definitions, ‘data extraction’ refers to the retrieval of crucial information through crawling and indexing. The sources of this extraction are mostly poorly-structured or unstructured data sets. Data extraction can prove to be highly beneficial if done in the right way. With the increasing shift towards online operations, extracting data from the web has become highly important.

The emergence of ‘scraping’

The act of information or data retrieval gets a unique name, and that’s what we call ‘data scraping.’ You might have already decided to pull data from 3rd party websites. If that’s what it is, then it’s high time to embark on the project. Most of the extractors will begin by checking the presence of APIs. However, they might be unaware of a crucial and unique option in this context.

Automatic data support

Every website lends virtual support to a structured data source, and that too by default. You can pull out or retrieve highly relevant data directly from the HTML. The process is termed as ‘web scraping’ and can ensure numerous benefits for you. Let’s check out how web scraping is useful and awesome.

Any content you view is ready for scraping

All of us download various stuff throughout the day. Whether it is music, important documents or images, downloads seem to be regular affairs. When you are successful in downloading any particular content of a page, it means the website offers unrestricted access to your browser. It won’t take long for you to understand that the content is programmatically accessible too. On that note, it’s high time to work out effective reasons that define the importance of web scraping. Before opting for RSS feeds, APIs, or other conventional data extraction methods, you should assess the benefits of web scraping. Here’s what you need to know in this context.

Website vs. APIs: Who’s the winner?

Site owners are more concerned about their public-facing or official websites than the structured data feeds. APIs can change, and feeds can shift without prior notifications. The breakdown of Twitter’s developer ecosystem is a crucial example for this.

So, what are the reasons for this downfall?

At times, these errors are deliberate. However, the crucial reasons are something else. Most of the enterprises are completely unaware of their structured data and information. Even if the data gets damaged, altered, or mangled, there’s no one to care about it.

However, that isn’t what happens with the website. When an official website stops functioning or delivers poor performance, the consequences are direct and in-your-face. Quite naturally, developers and site owners decide to fix it almost instantaneously.

Zero-rate limiting

Rate-limiting doesn’t exist for public websites. Although it’s imperative to build defences against access automation, most of the enterprises don’t care to do that. It’s only done if there are captchas on signups. If you aren’t making repeated requests, there are no possibilities of you being considered as a DDOS attack.

In-your-face data

Web scraping is perhaps the best way to gain access to crucial data. The desired data sets are already there, and you won’t have to rely on APIs or other data sources for gaining access. All you need to do is browse the site and find out the most appropriate data. Identifying and figuring out the basic data patterns will help you to a great extent.

Unknown and Anonymous access

You might want to gather information or collect data secretly. Simply put, you might wish to keep the entire process highly confidential. APIs will demand registrations and give you a key, which is the most important part of sending requests. With HTTP requests, you can stay secure and keep the process confidential, as the only aspects exposed are your site cookies and IP address. These are some of the reasons explaining the benefits of web scraping. Once you are through with these points, it’s high time to master the art of scraping.

Getting started with data extraction

If you are already eager to grab data, it’s high time you work on the blueprints for the project. Surprised? Well, data scraping or rather web data scraping requires in-depth analysis along with a bit of upfront work. While documentations are available with APIs, that’s not the case with HTTP requests. Be patient and innovative, as that will help you throughout the project.

2. Data fetching

Begin the process by looking for the URL and knowing the endpoints. Here are some of the pointers worth considering:

- Organized information: You must have an idea of the kind of information you want. If you wish to have it in an organized manner, rely on the navigation offered by the site. Track the changes in the site URL while you click through sections and sub-sections.
- Search functionality: Websites with search functionality will make your job easier than ever. You can keep on typing some of the useful terms or keywords based on your search. While doing so, keep track of URL changes.
- Removing unnecessary parameters: When it comes to looking for crucial information, the GET parameter plays a vital role. Try looking for unnecessary and undesired GET parameters in the URL, and removing them from the URL. Keep the ones that’ll help you load the data.

2. Pagination comes next

While looking for data, you might have to scroll down and move to subsequent pages. Once you click to Page 2, ‘offset=parameter’ gets added to the selected URL. Now, what is this function all about? The ‘offset=parameter’ function can represent either the number of features on the page or the page-numbering itself. The function will help you perform multiple iterations until you attain the “end of data” status.

Trying out AJAX

Most of the people nurture certain misconceptions about data scraping. While they think that AJAX makes their job tougher than ever, it’s actually the opposite. Sites utilising AJAX for data-loading ensures smooth data scraping. The time isn’t far away when AJAX will return along with JavaScript. Pulling up the ‘Network’ tab in Firebug or Web Inspector will be the best thing to do in this context. With these tips in mind, you will have the opportunity to get crucial data or information from the server. You need to extract the information and get it out of the page markup, which is the most difficult or tricky part of the process.

Unstructured data issues

When it comes to dealing with unstructured data, you will need to keep certain crucial aspects in mind. As stated earlier, pulling out the data from page markups is a highly critical task. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Utilising the CSS hooks

According to numerous web designers, the CSS hooks happen to be the best resources for puling data. Since it doesn’t involve numerous classes, CSS hooks offer straightforward data scraping.

2. Good HTML Parsing

Having a good HTML library will help you in ways more than one. With the help of a functional and dynamic HTML parsing library, you can create several iterations as and when you wish to.
Knowing the loopholes

Web scraping won’t be an easy affair. However, it won’t be a hard nut to crack either. While knowing the crucial web scraping tips is necessary, it’s also imperative to get an idea of the traps. If you have been thinking about it, we have something for you!

- Login contents: Contents that require you to login might prove to be potential traps. It reveals your identity and wreaks havoc on your project’s confidentiality.

- Rate limiting: Rate limiting can affect your scraping needs both positively and negatively, and that entirely depends on the application you are working on.

Source:-https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/how-easy-is-data-extraction

How Hedge Funds Can Use Web Scraping

How Hedge Funds Can Use Web Scraping

Web scraping or data extraction is the need of the hour to make sense of the huge and varied data being generated across multiple sources on the web. Irrespective of the sector you are working in, data extraction and mining is a crucial necessity to glean insights into consumer behavior, market forces, competitive intelligence, and price movements, and assist in management decision making.

There’s no denying the fact that numerous brands and enterprises are leveraging data extraction for further development and growth. Of late, hedge fund owners too are showing a huge affinity to utilizing the prowess of web scraping for unlocking new investment opportunities.

What we need to know is how web scraping is helping out hedge fund owners. What is it that makes web scraping essential for them and how can they use the technology to their advantage?
Fund management with web scraping

For a majority of discretionary fund managers, web scraping is a relatively new term. Although data scientists are aware of the concept, they might not have the right skills that lead to effective use of web scraping and data extraction. So, how does hedge fund management take place now? Let’s take a look at the current processes.

Most of the hedge funds have dedicated and centralized teams looking after the data extraction process. They have a group which is continuously looking for crucial data thus extracting it for more information. Once they find what they are looking for, they seek assistance from skilled data scientists who prepare comprehensive reports on the key findings. Based on these reports, managers have to take significant steps and implement crucial business strategies.

It’s here that the major problem arises. Most of these managers aren’t aware of the technicalities involved in data extraction. They don’t know what to do with these reports when it comes to devising business strategies.
The need for effective techniques

What you need is a comprehensive and integrated approach towards the entire process. Data scientists and business managers should have crystal clear understanding of web scraping thus working in tandem for better results. Here’s how they can work together:

1. Portfolio managers: PMs will need to develop a comprehensive understanding of trading strategies along with the power to explain his understandings. He should have the power to identify alpha opportunities.

2. Data scientists: Data scientists should know the art of data mining thus ingesting the findings into a database.

Simultaneous operations should take place where PMs, data scientists, and web scraping experts will take active parts. In a nutshell, business owners need highly efficient quant teams capable of extracting quant data sets.
The steps around web scraping for hedge funds

If you are managing hedge funds, data extraction and web scraping will be essential for you. Before knowing how to use this particular technique, make sure you gain information about the crucial steps that lead to web scraping.

•   Gaining access to data sets: Without the right data sets, it is impossible to perform web scraping. Data scientists and PMs must put their best efforts to find the correct information. It can come from internal divisions, external publications, or even from social media.

•   Understanding the financial drivers: You should know about the financial drivers involved in the process. Web scraping will depend on these key drivers to a great extent.

•   Quant vs. fundamental: There’s always a debate between data quants and fundamental knowledge. The prime emphasis should always be on identifying the insights, working on them, and turning them into effective actions.

With these steps in mind, you can plan the fund management process in detail thus taking the venture towards unsurpassed growth. Hedge fund owners have been relying on fundamental knowledge since a long time; it is high time they made a move and embraced web scraping.

Current positions and prospects

If market reports are anything to go by, you will come across nearly 70 hedge funds who claim to leverage big data. Once you take a closer look, the entire situation will get revealed. Only 20 amongst these 70 hedge funds work with Big Data and rely on web scraping techniques. Market reports also suggest that only a few of them are good at performing the process.

Web scraping is going to be the future! Just after a few years, hedge fund owners will have to rely on web scraping for effective fund management. Therefore, it’s high time to upgrade performances, processes, and operations. Those getting introduced to the concept for the first time should learn the art of performing web scraping and data extraction.

Building strong and effective financial models

Do you feel the existing infrastructure is enough to leverage web scraping? That’s not true, as there are numerous other aspects involved in the process. The presence of a strong and reliable financial model is of paramount significance. Financial models play a highly significant part in the utilization of technologies. If you are thinking of implementing web scraping, check the financial infrastructure and support your venture offers to you.

The third wave

Before the emergence of web scraping and data extraction, hedge fund owners relied on traditional data mining techniques. Those weren’t effective to a great extent, as they failed to offer targeted insights into the extraction process.

It’s here that the need for a third wave came up, and web scraping was what we all waited for. With this new and innovative technology, hedge fund managers will be able to utilize insights to stay ahead of the growth curve!

Final thoughts

Hedge fund management involves quite a few significant processes in order to yield the benefits expected by senior management of the company. However, if you are planning to use web scraping, it is important to know the right tips to do so. Most of the data scientists want to bridge the gap between fundamental fund management and web scraping. It is quite obvious that the latter is beneficial in the long run. With these tips and web scraping techniques in mind, you can ensure targeted hedge fund management and handling.

Source:https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/how-hedge-funds-can-use-web-scraping

Six Tools to Make Data Scraping More Approachable

What is data scraping?

Data scraping is a technique in which a computer program/software extracts data from a website, so it can be used for other purposes.Scraping may sound a little intimidating, but with the help of scraping tools, the process can be a lot more approachable. The tools are used to capture data you need from specific web pages quicker and easier.

Let your computer do all the work

It takes only a few minutes for systems to recognize each others codes even in huge databases. Computers have their own language and that is why some of these tools make it easier to pull and format information in a way that is simpler for people to reuse.

Here is a list of some data scraping tools:

1.Diffbot

What makes this tool so likable is the business-friendly approach. Tools like Diffbot are perfect for searching through competitors work and the performance of your own webpage. Get product data from images, articles, discussions, web crawling tools and process websites. If you like how this sounds, see for yourself and sign up for their 14-day free trial.


2.Import.io

Import.io can help you easily get the information from the any source on the web. This tool can get your data in less than 30 seconds, depending on how complicated the data is and its structure in the website.  It can also be used for multiple URL scraping at once.

Here is one example: Which city of California based organizations try to hire the most through Linkedin? Check this list of jobs available in linkedin, download a csv file, sort from A to Z the cities and voila – San Francisco it is. Did you know that it’s for free?

3.Kimono

Kimono gives you easy access to APIs created for various web pages. No need to write any code or install any software to extract data. Simply paste the URL into the website or use a bookmark. Select how often you want the data to be collected and it saves it for you.

4.ScraperWiki

ScraperWiki gives you two choices – extract data from PDFs or build your own scraping tool in PHP, Ruby and Python language. It is meant for more experienced users and offers consulting (a paid service) if you need to learn some coding to get what you need. The first two PDF files are analyzed and reorganized for free, afterwards it’s a paid solution.

5.Grabz.it

Yes, Grabz.it does grab something. It takes information that is meaningful to you. The tool extracts data from the web, then converts videos into animated GIF that you can use on your website or application. This tool was made for those who code in ASP.NET, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby languages.

6.Python

If programming is the language you love the most, then use Python to build your own scraping tool and get the data from a page you want to explore. It is particularly useful if the other tools don’t recognize the data you need.

If you haven’t used this tool before, follow this playlist of videos to learn how to use Python for web scraping:

If you want more tools, look into the Common Crawl organization. It is made for those who are interested in the data crawling world. Need a more specific tool? DMOZ and KDnuggets have lists of other tools for web data mining.

All of these tools extract information in spreadsheet formats and that is why this webinar about how to work with data in Excel can help you understand more about what to do if you desire  to supply the world with unique and beautifully data visualizations.



Source Url:-https://infogr.am/blog/six-tools-to-make-data-scraping-more-approachable/

Things to Consider when Evaluating Options for Web Data Extraction

Things to Consider when Evaluating Options for Web Data Extraction

Web data extraction possess tremendous applications in the business world. There are businesses that function solely based on data, others use it for business intelligence, competitor analysis and market research among other countless use cases. While everything is good with data, extracting massive data from the web is still a major roadblock for many companies, more so because they are not going through the optimal route. We decided to give you a detailed overview of different ways by which you can extract data from the web. This could help you make the final call while evaluating different options for web data extraction.

Different routes you can take to web data

Although different solutions exist for web data extraction, you should opt for the one that’s most suited for your requirement. These are the various options you can go with:

1. Build it in-house

2. DIY web scraping tool

3. Vertical-specific solution

4. Data-as-a-Service

1.   Build it in-house

If your company is technically rich, meaning you have a good technical team that can build and maintain a web scraping setup, it makes sense to build a crawler setup in-house. This option is more suitable for medium sized businesses with simpler requirements when it comes to data. However, building an in-house setup is not the biggest challenge- maintaining it is. Since web crawlers are really fragile and are vulnerable to the changes on target websites, you will have to dedicate time and labour into the maintenance of the in-house crawling setup.

Building your own in-house setup will not be easy if the number of websites you need to scrape are high or the websites aren’t using simple and traditional coding practices. If the target websites use complicated dynamic code, building your in-house setup becomes a bigger hurdle. This can hog your resources especially if extracting data from the web is not a competency of your business. Scaling up with your in-house crawling setup could also be a challenge as this would require high end resources, an extensive tech stack and a dedicated internal team. If your data needs are limited and the target websites simple, you can go ahead with an in-house crawling setup to cover your data needs.

Pros:

- Total ownership and control over the process
- Ideal for simpler requirements

2.   DIY scraping tools

If you don’t want to maintain a technical team that can build an in-house crawling setup and infrastructure, don’t worry. DIY scraping tools are exactly what you need. These tools usually require no technical knowledge as such and can be used by anyone who is good with the basics. They usually come with a visual interface where you can configure and deploy your web crawlers. The downside however, is that they are very limited in their capabilities and scale of operation. They are an ideal choice if you are just starting out with no budgets for data acquisition. DIY web scraping tools are usually priced very low and some are even free to use.

Maintenance would still be a challenge that you have to face with the DIY tools. As web crawlers are susceptible to becoming useless with minor changes in the target sites, you still have to maintain and adapt the tool from time to time. The good part is that it doesn’t require technically sound labour to handle them. Since the solution is readymade, you will also save the costs associated with building your own infrastructure for scraping.

With DIY tools, you will also be sacrificing on the data quality as these tools are not known for providing data in a ready to consume format. You will either have to employ an automated tool to check the data quality or do it manually. With these downsides apart, DIY tools can cater to simple and small scale data requirements. 

Pros:

- Full control over the process
- Prebuilt solution
- You can avail support for the tools
- Easier to configure and use

3.   Vertical-specific solution

You might be able find a data provider catering to only a specific industry vertical. If you could find one that has data for the industry that you are targeting, consider yourself lucky. Vertical specific data providers can give you data that is comprehensive in nature which improves the overall quality of the project. These solutions typically give you datasets that are already extracted and is ready to use.

The downside is the lack of customisation options. Since the provider is focusing on a specific industry vertical, their solution is less flexible to be altered depending on your specific requirements. They won’t let you add or remove data points and the data is given as is. It will be hard to find a vertical-specific solution that has data exactly the way you want. Another important thing to consider is that your competitors have access to the same data from these vertical-specific data providers. The data you get is hence less exclusive, but this may or may not be a deal breaker depending upon your requirement.

Pros:

- Comprehensive data from the industry
- Faster access to data
- No need to handle the complicated aspects of extraction

4.   Data as a service (DaaS)

Getting the required data from a DaaS provider is by far the best way to extract data from the web. With a data provider, you are completely relieved from the responsibility of crawler setup, maintenance and quality inspection of the data being extracted. Since these are companies specialised in data extraction with a pre-built infrastructure and dedicated team to handle it, they can provide this service to you at a much lower cost than what you’d incur with an in-house crawling setup.

In the case of a DaaS solution, all you have to do is provide them with your requirements like the data points, source websites, frequency of crawl, data format and the delivery methods. DaaS providers have high end infrastructure, resources and expert team to extract data from the web efficiently.

They will also have far superior knowledge in extracting data efficiently and at scale. With DaaS, you also have the comfort of getting data that’s free from noise and is formatted properly for compatibility. Since the data goes through quality inspections at their end, you can focus only on  applying data to your business. This can greatly reduce the workload on your data team and improve the efficiency.

Customisation and flexibility are other great advantages that come with a DaaS solution. Since these solutions are meant for the large enterprises, their offering is completely customisable for your exact requirements. If your requirement is large scale and recurring, it’s always best to go with a DaaS solution.

Pros:

- Completely customisable for your requirement
- Takes complete ownership of the process
- Quality checks to ensure high quality data
- Can handle dynamic and complicated websites
- More time to focus on your core business

Source:https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/choosing-a-data-extraction-service-provider

3 Advantages of Web Scraping for Your Enterprise

In today’s Internet-dominated world possessing the relevant information for your business is the key to success and prosperity. Harvested in a structural and organized manner, the information will help facilitate business processes in many ways, including, but not limited to, market research, competition analysis, network building, brand promotion and reputation tracking. More targeted information means a more successful business and with the widespread competition in place, the strive for better performances is crucial.

The results of data harvesting prove to be an invaluable assistance in the age when you have the need to be informed and if you want to stand your chance in the highly competitive modern markets. This is the reason why web data harvesting has long become an inevitable component of a successful enterprise and it is a highly useful tool in both kick-starting and maintaining a functioning business by providing relevant and accurate data when needed.

However good your product or service is, the simple truth is that no-one will buy it if they don't want it or believe that they don't need it. Moreover, you won't persuade anyone that they want or need to buy what you're offering unless you clearly understand what it is that your customers really want. This way, it is crucial to have an understanding of your customers’ preferences. Always remember - they are the kings of the market and they determine the demand. Having this in mind, you can use web data scraping to get the vital information and be able to make the crucial, game-changing decisions to make your enterprise the next big thing.

Enough about how awesome web scraping is in theory! Now, let’s zoom in on 3 specific and tangible advantages that it can provide for your business, helping You benefit from them.

1. Provision of huge amounts of data

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that there is an overflowing demand for new data for businesses across the globe. This happens because the competition increases day by day. Thus, the more information you have about your products, competitors, market etc. the better are your chances of expanding and persisting in the competitive business environment. This is a challenge but your enterprise is in luck because web scraping is specifically designed to collect the data which can be later used to analyse the market and make the necessary adjustments. But if you think that collecting data is as simple as it sounds and there is no sophistication involved in the process, think again: simply collecting data is not enough. The manner in which data extraction processes flow is also very important; as mere data collection itself is useless. The data needs to be organized and provided in a useable format to be accessible to wide masses. Good data management is key to efficiency. It’s instrumental to choose the right format, because its functions and capacities will determine the speed and productivity of your efforts, especially when you deal with large chunks of data. This is where excellent data scraping tools and services come in handy. They are widely available nowadays and are able to satisfy your company’s needs in a professional and timely manner.

2.  Market research and demand analyses

Trends and innovations allow you to see the general picture of your industry: how it’s faring today, what’s been trendy recently and which ones faded quickly. This way, you can avoid repeating mistakes of unsuccessful businesses, as well as, foresee how well yours will do, and possibly predict new trends.

Data extraction by web crawling will also provide you with up-to-date information about similar products or services in the market. Catalogues, web stores, results of promotional campaigns – all that data can be harvested. You need to know your competitors, if you want to be able to challenge their positions on the market and win over customers from them.

Furthermore, knowledge about various major and minor issues of your industry will help you in assessing the future demand of your product or service. More importantly, with the help of web scraping your company will remain alert for changes, adjustments and analyses of all aspects of your product or service.

3.  Business evaluation for intelligence

We cannot stress enough the importance of regularly analysing and evaluating your business. It is absolutely crucial for every business to have up-to-date information on how well they are doing and where they are amongst others in the market. For instance, if a competitor decides to lower the prices in order to grow their customer base you need to be prepared whether you can remain in the industry despite lowering prices. This can only be done with the help of data scraping services and tools.

Moreover, extracted data on reviews and recommendations from specific websites or social media portals will introduce you to the general opinion of the public. You can also use this technique to identify potential new customers and sway their opinions in your favor by creating targeted ads and campaigns.

To sum it up, it is undeniable that web scraping is a proven practice when it comes to maintaining a strong and competitive enterprise. Combining relevant information on your industry, competitors, partners and customers with thought-out business strategies and promotional campaigns, as well as, market research and business analyses will prove to be a solid way of establishing yourself in the market. Whether you own a startup or a successful company, keeping a finger on the pulse of the ever-evolving market will never hurt you. In fact, it might very well be the single most important advantage that will differentiate you from your competitors.

Source Url :- https://www.datahen.com/blog/3-advantages-of-web-scraping-for-your-enterprise

How Easily Can You Extract Data From Web

With tech advancements taking the entire world by a storm, every sector is undergoing massive transformations. As far as the business arena is concerned, the rise of big data and data analytics is playing a crucial part in operations. Big data and data analysis is the best way to identify customer interests. Businesses can gain crystal clear insights into consumers’ preferences, choices, and purchase behaviours, and that’s what leads to unmatched business success. So, it’s here that we come across a crucial question. How do enterprises and organisations leverage data to gain crucial insights into consumer preferences? Well, data extraction and mining are the two significant processes in this context. Let’s take a look at what data extraction means as a process.

Decoding data extraction
Businesses across the globe are trying their best to retrieve crucial data. But, what is it that’s helping them do that? It’s here that the concept of data extraction comes into the picture. Let’s begin with a functional definition of this concept. According to formal definitions, ‘data extraction’ refers to the retrieval of crucial information through crawling and indexing. The sources of this extraction are mostly poorly-structured or unstructured data sets. Data extraction can prove to be highly beneficial if done in the right way. With the increasing shift towards online operations, extracting data from the web has become highly important.

The emergence of ‘scraping’
The act of information or data retrieval gets a unique name, and that’s what we call ‘data scraping.’ You might have already decided to pull data from 3rd party websites. If that’s what it is, then it’s high time to embark on the project. Most of the extractors will begin by checking the presence of APIs. However, they might be unaware of a crucial and unique option in this context.

Automatic data support
Every website lends virtual support to a structured data source, and that too by default. You can pull out or retrieve highly relevant data directly from the HTML. The process is termed as ‘web scraping’ and can ensure numerous benefits for you. Let’s check out how web scraping is useful and awesome.

Any content you view is ready for scraping
All of us download various stuff throughout the day. Whether it is music, important documents or images, downloads seem to be regular affairs. When you are successful in downloading any particular content of a page, it means the website offers unrestricted access to your browser. It won’t take long for you to understand that the content is programmatically accessible too. On that note, it’s high time to work out effective reasons that define the importance of web scraping. Before opting for RSS feeds, APIs, or other conventional data extraction methods, you should assess the benefits of web scraping. Here’s what you need to know in this context.

Website vs. APIs: Who’s the winner?
Site owners are more concerned about their public-facing or official websites than the structured data feeds. APIs can change, and feeds can shift without prior notifications. The breakdown of Twitter’s developer ecosystem is a crucial example for this.

So, what are the reasons for this downfall?
At times, these errors are deliberate. However, the crucial reasons are something else. Most of the enterprises are completely unaware of their structured data and information. Even if the data gets damaged, altered, or mangled, there’s no one to care about it.
However, that isn’t what happens with the website. When an official website stops functioning or delivers poor performance, the consequences are direct and in-your-face. Quite naturally, developers and site owners decide to fix it almost instantaneously.

Zero-rate limiting
Rate-limiting doesn’t exist for public websites. Although it’s imperative to build defences against access automation, most of the enterprises don’t care to do that. It’s only done if there are captchas on signups. If you aren’t making repeated requests, there are no possibilities of you being considered as a DDOS attack.

In-your-face data
Web scraping is perhaps the best way to gain access to crucial data. The desired data sets are already there, and you won’t have to rely on APIs or other data sources for gaining access. All you need to do is browse the site and find out the most appropriate data. Identifying and figuring out the basic data patterns will help you to a great extent.
Unknown and Anonymous access

You might want to gather information or collect data secretly. Simply put, you might wish to keep the entire process highly confidential. APIs will demand registrations and give you a key, which is the most important part of sending requests. With HTTP requests, you can stay secure and keep the process confidential, as the only aspects exposed are your site cookies and IP address. These are some of the reasons explaining the benefits of web scraping. Once you are through with these points, it’s high time to master the art of scraping.
Getting started with data extraction

If you are already eager to grab data, it’s high time you work on the blueprints for the project. Surprised? Well, data scraping or rather web data scraping requires in-depth analysis along with a bit of upfront work. While documentations are available with APIs, that’s not the case with HTTP requests. Be patient and innovative, as that will help you throughout the project.

2. Data fetching

Begin the process by looking for the URL and knowing the endpoints. Here are some of the pointers worth considering:
- Organized information: You must have an idea of the kind of information you want. If you wish to have it in an organized manner, rely on the navigation offered by the site. Track the changes in the site URL while you click through sections and sub-sections.
- Search functionality: Websites with search functionality will make your job easier than ever. You can keep on typing some of the useful terms or keywords based on your search. While doing so, keep track of URL changes.
- Removing unnecessary parameters: When it comes to looking for crucial information, the GET parameter plays a vital role. Try looking for unnecessary and undesired GET parameters in the URL, and removing them from the URL. Keep the ones that’ll help you load the data.
2. Pagination comes next

While looking for data, you might have to scroll down and move to subsequent pages. Once you click to Page 2, ‘offset=parameter’ gets added to the selected URL. Now, what is this function all about? The ‘offset=parameter’ function can represent either the number of features on the page or the page-numbering itself. The function will help you perform multiple iterations until you attain the “end of data” status.

Trying out AJAX
Most of the people nurture certain misconceptions about data scraping. While they think that AJAX makes their job tougher than ever, it’s actually the opposite. Sites utilising AJAX for data-loading ensures smooth data scraping. The time isn’t far away when AJAX will return along with JavaScript. Pulling up the ‘Network’ tab in Firebug or Web Inspector will be the best thing to do in this context. With these tips in mind, you will have the opportunity to get crucial data or information from the server. You need to extract the information and get it out of the page markup, which is the most difficult or tricky part of the process.

Unstructured data issues
When it comes to dealing with unstructured data, you will need to keep certain crucial aspects in mind. As stated earlier, pulling out the data from page markups is a highly critical task. Here’s how you can do it:
1. Utilising the CSS hooks
According to numerous web designers, the CSS hooks happen to be the best resources for puling data. Since it doesn’t involve numerous classes, CSS hooks offer straightforward data scraping.
2. Good HTML Parsing
Having a good HTML library will help you in ways more than one. With the help of a functional and dynamic HTML parsing library, you can create several iterations as and when you wish to.

Knowing the loopholes
Web scraping won’t be an easy affair. However, it won’t be a hard nut to crack either. While knowing the crucial web scraping tips is necessary, it’s also imperative to get an idea of the traps. If you have been thinking about it, we have something for you!
- Login contents: Contents that require you to login might prove to be potential traps. It reveals your identity and wreaks havoc on your project’s confidentiality.
- Rate limiting: Rate limiting can affect your scraping needs both positively and negatively, and that entirely depends on the application you are working on.
Parting thoughts

Extracting data the right way will be critical to the success of your business venture. With traditional data extraction methods failing to offer desired experiences, web designers and developers are embracing web scraping services. With these essential tips and tricks, you will surely gain data insights with perfect web scraping.

Source Url:- https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/how-easy-is-data-extraction

How Commercial Web Data Extraction Services Help Enterprise Growth

How Commercial Web Data Extraction Services Help Enterprise Growth

While the Internet is an ocean of information, it is important for businesses to access this data the smart way for their success in today’s world of cut-throat competition. However, the data on the web may not be open for all. Most sites do not provide an option of saving the data that’s displayed. This is precisely where web scraping services comes into the picture. There are endless applications of web scraping for business requirements. Web scraping provides value addition to multiple industry verticals in a multitude of ways:

Check out some of these scenarios.

Value proposition of web scraping for different industries

1. Collecting data from various sources to do analysis

There may be a need to analyze and gather data for a particular domain from several websites. This domain can be marketing, finance, industrial equipment, electronic gadgets, automobiles or real estate. Different websites belonging to different niches show information in diverse formats. It is also possible that you may not see the entire data at once in a single portal. The data could be distributed across many pages such as in results of a Google search under different sections. It is possible to extract data via a web scraper from various websites into a single database or spreadsheet. Thus, it becomes convenient for you to visualize or analyze the extracted data.

2. For research purpose

For any research, data is an important part, be it for scientific, marketing or for academic purpose. Web scrapers can help you to collect structured data from various sources on the net with great comfort.

3. For price comparison, market analysis, E-commerce or business

Businesses that cater to services or products for a particular domain must have detailed data of similar services or items that come to the market on a daily basis. Software for web scraping is useful to ensure a constant vigil on the data. All the necessary information can be accessible from various sources by only clicking a few buttons.

4. To track online presence

This is a key aspect of the web scraping where reviews and business profiles on the portals can be easily tracked. The information can then be used to assess the reaction of customers, user behavior, and the product performance. The crawlers can also check and list several thousands of user reviews and user profiles that are quite handy for business analytics.

5. Managing online reputation

It is a digital world today and more and more organizations are showing their keenness to spend resources on managing online reputation. So, web scraping is a necessary tool here too. While the management prepares its ORM strategy, the extracted data helps it to understand the target audiences to be reached and which areas could be vulnerable for the brand’s reputation. Web crawling can reveal important demographic data like the sentiment, GEO location, age group and gender in the text. When you have a proper understanding of these vulnerable areas, you can take leverage out of them.

6. Better targeted advertisements can be provided to the customers

Web scraping tools will not only give you figures but will also provide you with behavioral analytics and sentiments. So, you are aware of the types of audiences and the kinds of advertisements they would prefer to watch.

7. To collect opinion from public

Web scraping helps you to monitor particular organizational web pages from different social networks to collect updates on the views of the people on specific companies as well as their products. Collecting data is extremely important for the growth of any product.

8. Results of search engines can be scraped to track SEO

When the organic search results are scraped, it is easier to track your SEO rivals for a certain search term. It helps you to determine the keywords and the title tags that are being targeted by your competitors. Eventually, you have an idea of the keywords that are bringing in more web traffic to your website, the kind of contents, which are more appealing to the online users and the links that are attracting them. You also get to know the type of resources that will help to get your site a higher rank in the search results.

Source:https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/commercial-web-data-extraction-services-enterprise-growth