In these modern times, many businesses desire to collect a wide range of data from various websites because a huge source of data could give them the competitive advantages in the market. To help them with data extraction, many people utilize a technique called proxy crawling service or web scraping.
While web scraping is getting more and more popular, misconceptions about this data scraping still exist. If you are a newbie in this field, clearing up these misunderstandings is helpful for you to have a deeper understanding in web scraping. Here are 5 common wrong ideas about web scraping you need to know.
Web scraping is illegal
There are plenty of arguments when it comes to the legality of web scraping. In fact, many people have false impressions about web scraping as they think some people steal content from others by using it. However, web scraping is not illegal by itself as you can use it to help with your analysis. Web scraping is illegal only when you use it for bad purposes. The problem only comes when you disregard the Terms of Service and use it without a site owner’s permission. Even though web scraping does not have a clear law or terms to address its application, it is embodied in some legal regulations.
I can scrape any websites
Not all websites can be scraped easily. Some websites deploy anti-scraping techniques to prevent scraping as they do not want their information to be freely accessed. There are some mechanisms that help web pages to detect search engines that are working and then block their scraping attempts. Those anti-scraping technologies include IP, CAPTCHA, AJAX, UA, and so on. Although in some cases, you can overcome detection and bypass anti-scraping mechanisms, this will take you a large amount of time and money.
Web scraping and web crawling are the same
Many people usually misunderstand that web scraping and web crawling are the same. However, they have different features and are used for different purposes. Let’s have a quick look at their definition:
– Web crawling is the act of automatically downloading data from the target site, fetching all the hyperlinks involved and then following them. Web crawling is simply like what search engines do. The downloaded information is usually stored in an index or a database to make it easy for processing in the future.
– Web scraping is the act of automatically downloading data from the target site and fetching detailed information from it. The data that is fetched can be stored almost everywhere.
I need to master coding skills to scrape data
Many people might believe that you need to be a master in coding to scrape data. However, having basic knowledge of coding is enough for you to scrape a website. For non-technical users, there are various software solutions and web scraping tools out there that could help you with coding.
Today, you might feel confused when finding out the best web scraping tool for you. To help you find out a proper web scraping tools that could aid your coding, we highly recommend WINTR. It is an extremely useful web scraping and parsing service. With WINTR, you can scrape data of available websites from many different countries. Its proxying features allow companies and developers to gather data with great accuracy. WINTR provides many services such as data scraping, HTML parsing, data processing, or request customization. It is a powerful tool that could make your web scraping become very simple, especially for those who do not have proficiency in coding.
You can click on the following link to find more information about WINTR: https://www.wintr.com/
