The content and use of the internet are growing, without any signs of stopping either. The internet is constantly becoming richer in all kinds of data. Just so you can get a general idea, over 7.5 million blog posts are published each day.
Because internet data is open and available to everyone, tools and programs are rapidly being developed to go through, extract, gather, and store this data people can use later for different purposes. Understandably, activities such as web scraping are gaining worldwide popularity.
If you’re eager to learn more about web scraping and how you can benefit from it, you’re in the right place.
What is web scraping?
Let’s start by saying something more about web scraping. Everyone has undoubtedly stumbled upon this term by now, but let’s look at what it encompases.
Web scraping is an internet activity that more and more people are taking advantage of, thanks to its countless benefits. Essentially, it’s an activity used for the extraction of data available on the web. How can someone just gain access to all the data found online?
Since the internet is available to everyone, anyone can take what they want. Think of it this way – every time you copy and paste something from the internet, you’re web scraping on a small level.
Therefore, web scrapers are programs and tools designed to perform these actions on a much bigger scale. You can scrape images from a website, gather different prices, and even compare currency values from different countries.
Web scraping truly has no limits and is a very versatile tool, especially for companies. Businesses can flourish and improve their revenue just by implementing web scraping practices.
5 Main uses of web scraping
As already mentioned, you can use web scraping for just about anything you need additional information about. However, some uses are more popular than others. Without further ado, here are the top five main reasons people use web scraping.
1. Image scraping
Although web scraping is designed to gather information, people usually think only text can be scraped. However, that’s far from true. Images play a significant role on websites and blog posts, whether related to IT, retail, hospitality, tourism, economy, medicine, or anything else. They influence website visitors and blog readers to make certain decisions, and that makes them very powerful.
Therefore, image scraping is starting to become widely practiced, and today you can scrape images from websites in just several seconds. Find more info about image scraping here.
2. Price scraping
If you’re a business owner, you already know how challenging it is to determine the prices of your products or services and know when to alter them.
With web scraping programs, you can track all your competitors’ price changes easily. That way, you’ll immediately get notified when they make a price change. As a result, you’ll always know when is the perfect time to raise or lower your prices, which will provide you with the best conversion rate.
3. Contact scraping
Contacts are yet another possibility you can use web scraping for. Namely, all your customers reach you with some kind of personal information. In most cases, that’s an email address. Even if you just got the email address of your customers and nothing else, web scrapers can gather other information you need.
In just a few minutes, you can get a detailed list of all your customers, alongside their email addresses, personal names, birth dates, phone numbers, and even home addresses.
4. Marketing scraping
Companies only use web scraping to learn more about their customers. Why would companies want to know more about their customers in the first place?
By getting to know their audience better, companies can make better marketing plans and sound business decisions in the future. Determining their customers’ gender, average age, and common interests, allows businesses to tailor ads to specific demographics and even fine-tune their brand voice to better communicate with their target audience.
5. Currency scraping
Various companies make great use of scraping information on different currencies. It allows them to gather currency exchange details from all around the world in one place and monitor their changes so that they can make the right moves at the right time.
Stock investors and international company owners make great use of this feature. It can assist them in the decision-making process and help them decide when to buy and sell.
Conclusion
All in all, web scraping is an activity you can certainly find useful in a wide range of industries. Image, price, contact, marketing, and currency scraping methods are just some of the examples of how you can take advantage of a web scraping tool to suit your personal needs. Try out web scraping programs today and see how you can benefit from them.
