Gathering accurate information in a timely manner is the key to success, regardless of your industry. From predicting market trends to wowing your audience and taking on the competitors, it’s access to relevant data that will help you achieve your goals – and web scraping is what will give you access to relevant data.
Web scraping presents countless benefits for businesses of all shapes and sizes, but you’ll need the right tools to make it work for you.
Learn what makes web scraping essential for businesses across niches, and determine what tools you’ll need to use.
The importance of web scraping for businesses
Web scraping is no new concept. It’s the process of extracting publicly available data from websites. The data can include anything from company contact information, such as product prices, customer reviews, stock prices, or anything in between.
Though it can be frowned upon due to malicious scrapers that account for an average of 2% reduction in online earnings, web scraping is perfectly legal when done ethically. Moreover, it’s critical for businesses that want to remain competitive.
Through web scraping, you can seamlessly perform essential processes, including:
- Competitor research – you can collect information about your competitor’s strategies, strengths and weaknesses, marketing tactics, and more;
- Market research – through web scraping, you can assess market conditions, identify trends, and predict changes;
- Audience research – you can collect information about your target audience’s needs and desires, identify their spending habits, understand their online behaviors, and more;
- Price optimization – web scraping can provide you with relevant information to improve your pricing strategy and increase revenue through price optimization;
- Lead generation – web scraping can help you collect lead contact information for improved lead generation;
- Product optimization – web scraping enables you to conduct sentiment analysis and identify your products’ areas for improvement;
- Investment decision-making – with web scraping, you can access timely information that enables you to make more lucrative investment decisions and identify opportunities.
To conduct any type of research, you’ll need to turn to web scraping, making it an essential process for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
The tools you’ll need for successful web scraping
Though you can certainly perform web scraping manually, there are significant drawbacks to doing so. Manual web scraping could take days, depending on the amount of data you need. It exposes you to higher risks of human error during data extraction and requires significant investments.
That’s why most businesses opt for automated web scraping. Therefore, the first tool you’ll need is a web scraping bot, simply known as a web scraper.
Currently, it’s estimated that 47.4% of all internet traffic comes from bots, the majority of them created for web scraping. Web scrapers come in a few different forms, so you’ll be able to choose between:
- Browser extensions – used as any other browser extension, these bots can be effective for small-scale web scraping as they can only process limited amounts of data;
- Cloud-based web scrapers – offered by web scraping service providers, cloud-based scrapers can process large amounts of data but can become expensive;
- Installable scrapers – fully customizable, installable scrapers generally require you to have some coding skills, as you’ll be responsible for their maintenance.
In addition to a web scraper, you’ll only need one more tool – a proxy.
A proxy is an intermediary that routes traffic from your device through its servers, and to the websites you’re scraping. It shields your device information, hides your IP address, and makes it seem like your traffic is coming from a different location.
This simple tool can quickly become critical for your web scraping operations as it keeps you secure and anonymous.
Why having a reliable proxy is a must
Web scraping without the use of a proxy can be virtually impossible. Many websites will have anti-bot technologies such as CAPTCHAs to ensure that only real users can access them. If they identify that the traffic from your IP address is from bots, your IP will be blocked, and you’ll no longer be able to collect relevant information.
You can quickly eliminate this problem with a proxy by hiding your actual IP address. The proxy will provide you with a fake IP address – even if that address gets blocked, you can always change it again.
However, rotating your IP isn’t the only benefit of using proxies. The most significant advantage is that proxies can help you bypass geo-restrictions, so you can collect relevant, location-specific information regardless of where you are.
If you’re in the UK and want to access websites only available in the US, for instance, all you need is a US residential proxy to make it seem like your traffic is coming from the US.
Considering that many businesses will present different pricing information to users based on their location and even different product offers, using proxy servers with locations worldwide can help you perform more thorough research and collect more relevant information for specific markets.
Conclusion
Web scraping is a necessity for businesses of all industries. It increases your competitiveness and boosts your performance by helping you streamline processes such as competitor and market research, price optimization, and even lead generation.
Considering that the only tools you need are reliable web scrapers and proxy servers, such as a US residential proxy server, there’s no reason to put off web scraping any longer.
