WHAT IS WEB SCRAPING?

Data parsing or Web Scraping is a standard procedure for gathering relevant information from the Internet. Specialized software is used for this purpose. The information is automatically collected according to the set parameters, structured, and written into a file for further analysis. Such a method is suitable for collecting statistics, the cost of various offerers, and obtaining data on products in catalogs.

Parser software technology

For many users of the Internet, web scraping is the most suitable way of doing business. The technology for gathering and processing the necessary information is as follows:

• the user launches the appropriate software, downloads the web addresses of the resources to be analyzed;
• A list of keywords and phrases, blocks and numbers to search for data is compiled;
• the robot visits the indicated sites and collects the information on the key expressions entered;
• The data is then written to a file in the form of a table. The output format is also user-defined.

Scraping makes it possible to obtain an array of information for analysis fairly quickly. It does not take long for the user to fill in the input data and activate the software.

Purpose of parsing

Gathering information from web resources is a common practice for many web users. More often than not, parsing is necessary for business purposes, as it is a time-consuming and often impossible task to visit and analyze a huge number of resources on the web by oneself. The tasks of web scraping can be as follows:

• analysis of texts and other information on competitors’ websites for a particular subject is better done in automatic mode;
• if data about a particular person, product, or service is required, specialized software can be run and the results analyzed;
• Parsing competitor websites that offer different products or services is a good way to keep up with new products and successfully promote your products.

In most cases, web scraping is an effective tool in competition. Other ways to get reliable data quickly are slow and do not always give good results.

Using a proxy server for Web Scraping

It is impossible to run good parsing programs without using proxy servers. The main reason is a large number of requests from one IP address to a particular site. Anti-Fraud systems available on most resources detect the growth of requests from one host and interpret it as a DDoS attack, blocking access to the site.

The only way to make a huge number of requests to a site is to change the IP address of the connection. This bypasses the web scraping antifraud protection and gives the network user valid data without the risk of being blocked.

Many resources have additional protection against copying data into tables. It is not possible to get the data in a readable form on your own. Programs that work through specialized proxies can bypass this limitation and gather the necessary output on-demand in the desired format.

Free and paid proxies – what to choose?

Countless proxies are operating on the Internet both on a free and paid basis. The first variant is practically not used for parsing because most of the resources are already in the black lists. If you try to use such services, you will soon be either blocked access to a resource or have to manually enter the captcha.

Paid proxies are the best option for scraping. All you need to do is to choose a proxy that matches your parameters and references and then the information can be automatically collected without any complications. If you have any questions, the technical support of such proxies will reply within 5 minutes.

What is the optimal number of proxies for scraping?

Depending on the user’s needs, and the number and characteristics of the sites being probed, the number of proxies may vary. The standard web resources allow 300 to 600 requests per hour from a single IP address. Therefore the number of proxies rented should be calculated according to these inputs. Most often a single anonymous IP is leased for about 450 requests to a website.

Is it legal to use parsing?

There are numerous software tools designed for web parsing. For this, they use standard open-source programming languages. Users can buy suitable software from a web scraping development company and make some changes. Thus scraping is completely legal. As long as the content is available on the web, no one forbids to download or use it.

Purchasing a pool of IP addresses makes it possible to perform parsing without any restrictions. Using a bundle of anonymous IP and specialized software, you can quickly collect information about the products in the catalog, and their prices, study sports statistics and get other necessary information.