Don’t Know How to Scrape the Web? Here’s Why You Should Learn Right Now
It’s no secret that the Internet is full of valuable data, which can help you obtain better results from your projects. Still, selecting and collecting relevant information can be a tedious task. No one wants to stay in front of the computer day in and day out, scrolling through endless data.
At the end of the day, the gathered information can be helpful, but manual searches take a lot of time. This means that you’ll have less time to focus on your work and optimize your business.
The solution to fast and reliable data collection is a handy tool called a web scraper. You can gather better information, and the process is way quicker than manually surfing the Internet for great data.
I’m not saying that surfing is, by all means, a bad thing, but sometimes it’s better to just lie on the beach and enjoy the work doing itself. Let’s talk about how learning web scraping helps your business and gives you a break from constant data clutters.
How does web scraping work?
You can probably guess what web scraping is. But I’m here to give you a better perspective.
To put it simply, web scraping is the process of collecting data from any public website. This information is then exported as a single file. Let’s break it down a little.
A web scraping tool is a bot that automatically gathers HTML code from web pages and conveniently compiles it for better results. No more of that monotonous copying and pasting. Select all the pages you’re interested in, add their URL’s and gather data from multiple sources in no time.
When it comes to storage, it’s entirely up to you what you want to do with the extracted data. If you wish to read the information, it can be exported as a CVS file, in which you choose how to arrange essential details. If you plan to use the data for a different software product, then JSON is the format for you, as it makes data transfer between two separate programs easy.
You can probably tell by now that web scraping saves you and your business a lot of time. Let’s check out the many ways you can put it to work.
Great uses for web scraping
1. Market Analysis
Market research helps business owners identify new opportunities, have an overview of the competition, and create new strategies. With the help of the data extracted through web scraping, more options and better methods are sure to pop up. Having access to numerous sources of pricing data and product information ensures that you see the market through the eyes of your customers.
You will automatically have access to updated information about your competitors’ deals and campaigns through a web scraping tool. This knowledge will set the seal on you staying ahead of the market and understanding the competitive landscape, as well as your client’s behavior.
2. Machine learning
Machine learning algorithms require vast quantities of training data to function correctly, and developers need that information to be accurate. You may think about manually recording data; however, that’s not the greatest of options.
While you can find various datasets free to download, these may not apply to every learning algorithm. Web scraping gives you quick access to all the images of videos you need to start your machine learning journey.
When it comes to teaching machines to think logically using algorithms, volume is also an important aspect. The more data you pass to them, the higher its performance and accuracy. This seems to be a match made in heaven, as scraping excels at extracting a vast amount of data with great precision.
Having knowledge of web scraping and knowing how to use the data is set to become be an essential skill in the future of machine learning. A skill you can acquire if you know where to look.
3. Designing a new product
When starting a new venture, no matter how small, creating something out of the ordinary is always the goal. But it’s tough to be creative when you also have to consider the cost and time of the development process. That’s where web scraping comes in.
Extracting large amounts of accurate data in record time is something that frees up your mind and time. When you replace the tedious task of manually searching for data, you can expand your creativity and release exciting products and services.
Web scrapers are handy and useful for when you need to extract a large volume of images, videos, or any type of multimedia data. This ability to rapidly compile information helps you to optimize your work and concentrate on innovation.
This is a crucial aspect of projects that stand out: the freedom of being innovative. With this in mind and the technical know-how of scraping, you are set to create all sorts of cool stuff.
Here’s a text-to-speech scraper made in just 30 minutes to boost your scraping confidence.
4. Lead Generation
It’s no secret that generating leads is a real headache for businesses. Attracting prospects and converting them into clients requires a complex strategy. On top of that, you can buy lead lists, but that’s not an ideal situation as it costs money, and there’s little guarantee of success. Web scraping is often a more cost-effective way of getting the same results, if not better.
An excellent place to start when scraping for a specific type of customer is a business aggregation site. With the proper knowledge, you can compile an extensive list of potential clients for your niche product or service.
Once you’re done with the general list, you can target specific companies by scraping their websites. This is a great way to gather addresses and contact information or any compelling information that might help you turn any prospect into a client.
5. Search Engine Optimization Strategies
SEO refers to the process of improving one’s website in terms of visibility on search results pages. More visible web pages mean more prospects for your business, better brand awareness, and more chances to make money from ads running on your website.
What do you need to know when creating great SEO strategies? That search engines scroll through websites and index data based on multiple ranking factors. Keywords are an essential aspect of content optimization and significantly impact the search engine rate system.
Web scraping can help your SEO journey in many ways. The process can give you a better image of your rankings by searching for a keyword that describes your product. It can also search for phrases used by your competitors, so you know what to change to have the edge over them.
Keep in mind that ranking changes all the time, and it’s essential to improve your keyword strategies constantly. When you automate data collection, you have plenty of time to implement changes for a better web page ranking.
Focus on what matters
I’m not saying that data collection and accuracy are not valuable — quite the opposite. But automating information gathering through a web scraper gives you the time to concentrate on the exciting parts of your projects. As previously mentioned: the faster the process, the more you’ll have time to come up with creative ideas. But there’s something else.
Say you have to collect data from 1000 pages. Now think about having to check all of those by hand. Tedious, right? In this situation, a web scraper should be at the center of your strategy. Because the more data you require, the better of an option it becomes.
The old way of gathering data is simply not efficient anymore. We work with large sets of data nowadays, and the last thing we want to do is scroll through numerous websites in search of that next great piece of information. Web scraping is better and faster. There are plenty more reasons why automation should replace the manual collection of data.
Scraping the web is easy
Learning web scraping is an essential skill for anyone who wants to optimize a project or business. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s overly complicated. It’s just a bot that surfs the Internet for you. You only need some programming skills and a desire to do things faster.
The beauty of web scraping is that you can apply it to so many different areas. From SEO, market analysis, or machine learning, the sky is the limit. You decide what to collect, how to gather, and how to manage the data.
Ultimately, web scraping is just the next step in automating the way we work. It’s not just a useful tool but a way to free our creativity. It’s an essential skill any developer should have in today’s data-driven world.
Don’t know where to start? I’ll help you out. Check out these great tutorials for scraping with Javascript and Python.
