Since many businesses have moved to the virtual world, there has been an increase in e-commerce businesses. Nowadays, everything we want is available only a few clicks away. However, you will need advanced tools to make your way to the top of every search engine and increase your online visibility.
If you are a business owner who wants to reach a broader audience and be ahead of your competitors, web scraping can help. Let’s see what it is and the five best practices for successful web scraping.
What is web scraping?
Web scraping is collecting data from the internet and categorizing it into files. It means gathering data from your competitors’ websites, such as their target audience, marketing strategies, and pricing, in their digital form. Most of the harvested data will be in HTML form – you need to parse it to analyze it.
The process of web scraping is wholly automatic and time-efficient. You can specify which data you want your scraper to collect on your behalf, making the process even more efficient. Once you scrape the selected data from a website, you can see what your competitors are doing to increase their internet visibility. Below, you will learn how you can ensure successful web scraping.
Five best web scraping practices
Since the concept of web scraping may be complex to grasp, we have prepared several practices you can use to collect data successfully and safely with no previous experience.
Python
Python is one of the easiest programming languages to learn and use daily. Since this language resembles English, you can understand any code in Python and learn how to write your code in no time. When it comes to web scraping, you can use Python to automate the process of extracting data from the internet.
This programming language has numerous advanced libraries that can help you read the data you have extracted from the internet. With Python, you will save time while also being able to analyze the data right away. Python developers have made many libraries explicitly for web scraping, making this programming language the best for this purpose.
Proxies
A proxy server’s primary purpose is to protect you online and hide your data from other parties. You may not have thought of proxies as tools to automate different processes on the internet, but you can also use these powerful tools for web scraping.
When accessing a website, you reveal your IP address to its hosting server. Once you start scraping, the server automatically detects your intentions and presents you with irrelevant data. It may even ban your IP address if you try to collect extensive quantities of data. To prevent these scenarios from happening, you can use proxies. Furthermore, they allow you to change your location. For example, if you use such tools as a US proxy, you can access content only available in the US.
Headless browsers
Headless browsers are browsers with no GUI (Graphical User Interface). They contain the same data a typical browser stores but with no added media, such as buttons, pictures, and icons. Regarding web scraping, headless browsers can decrease the time necessary to complete data collection.
Since headless browsers don’t contain any media that may be time-consuming to scrape, the whole web scraping process will be quicker. Moreover, because you are collecting extensive data, you may experience throttling, but it will be a thing of the past with a headless browser.
Honeypot traps
Many websites have “honeypot traps,” links only web scrapers can see. All other users and visitors cannot detect these links. Website developers make them catch and block those who want to collect data from a specific website. When you click on this link, the website will reject all your requests, preventing you from collecting data.
When scraping a website, please pay attention to these links and avoid them. If you see that the link has the color “none” in CSS, it might be a sign that it is a honeypot link (in most cases). Beware of these links when collecting data from websites; they may cause problems.
Peak hours
You may think there isn’t a perfect time for web scraping; you can do it whenever you like. Although that is true to some extent, you can save yourself some time by avoiding peak hours. See when a particular website receives the most requests to pick a time when the server load is minimal.
It would be best if you avoided web scraping during this time because plenty of new data increases traffic on the target website. Instead, you should collect data when the traffic is the quietest. For businesses, that is usually during the night or early morning. However, the ideal time depends on the website and its usual traffic.
Conclusion
Since the virtual world keeps growing every day, we are looking for ways to explore this wilderness and become the kings and queens of the jungle. If you want to increase your online visibility and improve your reputation, use web scraping with US proxy servers, Python, or any of the other tools mentioned above. Follow the best practices above to ensure your data collection flows smoothly and successfully.