Web Scraping / Data Extraction
The web is an enormous repository of information. Unfortunately, the vast majority of it is only designed to be accessed by human beings through a web browser. Web scraping allows for crawling through web sites, automatically parsing HTML, revealing information you're interested in.
Once we extract text and data from a web page it can then save the information by writing it to a spreadsheet, CSV, XML, plain text file, or even inserting it into a SQL database.
Web scraping is known by several terms and technologies that might reflect what you're looking for:
- Screen Scraping
- Data Collection and Automated Data Collection
- Data Mining and Web Site Data Mining
- Web Site Scraping
- Data Extraction
- Data Crawling
- Web Site Ripper
You need tell us the URL of your targeted website and detailed requirements, so that we can analyze the structure and the level of difficulty to extract the data. The factors that affect the price are, complexity of the site and sometimes the amount of records. We can also scrape/download images, PDFs and other files.
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Data Collection
If you're interested in collecting data for your business or personal use, web scraping technology may be just the solution you're looking for. Oftentimes people resort to manual copying and pasting to download data from a web site. This is obviously a laborious way of going about collecting data.
Instead, consider that web scraping can spider through hundreds or even thousands of pages in a fraction of the time it would require to collect the data manually. As our software crawls web sites it can save information for you to a database, XML file, or some other repository.
Examples of data collection include:
- Crawl a genealogy web site, extracting names of ancestors for an individual
- Collect data related to mortgage or real estate data so that it can be searched, filtered, and sorted in a spreadsheet
- Perform web scraping to download images from a stock photography web site for which you have an account
Automated Data Collection
We can automatically collect data on a scheduled basis or on-demand. If you're interested in monitoring web site data as it changes over time web scraping can handle this for you.
There are a number of instances where you may want to record and track data as it changes. Automatically collecting data on a scheduled basis might allow you to determine trends, watch for patterns, or even predict how data will change in the future. Once we set up the scraping to mine data for you it can record the information to a spreadsheet or database so that you can analyze it later.
Examples of automated data collection include:
- Monitor mortgage rates from several lending companies on a daily basis
- Automatically collect stock price data on your favorite companies
- Capture web pages on a daily basis to watch for changes
Data Mining
Oftentimes web scraping is called "data mining", even though it's actually a different technology. Nonetheless, we can mine data from web pages in the sense that it extracts out individual pieces of information that you're interested in.
Mining information from web sites can often be laborious if it's done by copying and pasting or by writing specialized scripts to do so. We can dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to perform web scraping. Web pages can be initially captured via our proxy server, after which you can indicate which pieces of the page you're interested in mining.
Examples of data mining include:
- Extract prices and details from your product supplier web sites so that they can then be easily updated on your web site
- Mine stock data from on a number of companies in order to analyze and compare them
- Use data mining to extract client information from a health care provider web site for which you have a log in
Web Site Data Mining
Also referred to as "web site data mining", we can crawl web sites, extracting data that's useful to you. Normally capturing data from web pages can be very time consuming, whether you're doing it by hand or writing special scripts to collect the information.
Mining text from web sites is made significantly easier and faster making the scraping process extremely efficient.
Examples of web site data mining include:
- Mine files from web sites, such as photographs or icons
- Scrape auto insurance rates from many web sites in order to find the best price
- Crawl and collect data off of music download sites to create a comprehensive listing of available songs and albums
Web Site Scraping
Scraping web sites for information of value can be done by us automatically. Once we set up a specific site it can crawl through the web pages, extracting out data such as stock quotes, mortgage rates, or travel itineraries.
A common use is to set it up to scrape multiple web sites for information, insert that information into a database, then allow it to be searched via a web interface. This is commonly known as "meta-searching".
Examples of web site scraping include:
- Create a web site that allows users to search for travel rates from multiple web sites in real time
- Scrape web sites containing products you'd like to sell as an affiliate, then upload that information to your own web site
- Mine text headlines from a news web site in order to create RSS feeds
Web Content Mining
The web is often referred to as the world's largest database. We allows you to mine content from the web almost as if you were searching a database.
Just like you might search a SQL Server or MySQL database from your software, likewise we can extract the data in such format that it can be easily imported into your software and then allows you to use that data in your own application.
Examples of web content mining include:
- Crawl a web site containing data such as product prices and descriptions that you want to mine
- Use content mined from financial web sites to make predictions about how data such as rates and quotes might change over time
- Automatically scrape data from various auto or car web sites so that listings can be searched from a single web site
Web Site Data Extraction
Web sites often contain similar information that they present in different formats. Because of the different presentation formats it makes it difficult to easily compare and analyze their data. Our data extraction tool can crawl sites for common information, even if the sites use different presentation formats.
We can capture web pages, then pin-point specific pieces of information you'd like to extract. The time required to do web site data extraction goes down considerably in comparison to manually copying and pasting or writing special scripts.
Examples of web site data extraction include:
- Log in to a web site containing information on products you sell through your web site, extract the data, then upload that content to your web site
- Extract data from a web site containing store locations, then download that data to a spreadsheet
- Mine content related to various insurance rates so that they can be compared and analyzed
Web Site Ripper
Scraping data from a web site is sometimes referred to as "ripping". Because of this you might consider web scraping process as web site ripper, or process that extracts information from a web site.
We can configure our software to capture data from web pages as it crawls through them, downloading that information to a file, spreadsheet, or database. Once data has been mined from web pages you might then allow it to be searched, filtered, and analyzed.
Examples of web site ripper:
- Automatically rip data from a weather web site, then display it on your desktop
- Cycle through zip codes, mining real estate data for corresponding geographical areas
- Save web pages from a site for archival purposes