Frequently asked questions about web scraping

Scraping is the process of getting data from a website. This can be done by copying and pasting manually or using software. Nowadays, scraping has become synonymous with automated data collection.

Other definitions may also be encountered: scraping is used as a general term for the entire process of visiting pages or web crawling, obtaining data, and cleaning and transforming data, or in other words, processing and enriching data.

What should I include in my parsing request?

Describe your web scraping project:

• links to sites that need to be parsed;
• specify what exactly needs to be parsed from the sites – reviews, price, description, name, etc., it would be best if you take a screenshot of the site and highlight in color what needs to be parsed, an example is below:

• Specify parameters that limit data collection – category, brands or products;
• in what format do you need the data – CSV/EXCEL;
• indicate the frequency of collection – once a day, once a week, once a month;
• Please provide your phone number and email so that our managers can contact you and ask clarifying questions about the task.

What happens after I fill out the feedback form?

After you have described your scraping project, one of our managers will carefully study your request, as well as the site from which you need to collect information, to determine whether its terms of use, robots.txt and other factors allow you to scrape the necessary data from the sites you need.

Our team will contact you shortly. You will immediately know whether your scraping project is technically and legally feasible. The consultation is free, without any hidden costs.

How much do your web scraping services cost?

Since we offer a custom solution for each client, the price will vary depending on several factors, such as the complexity of the task and the scale of the project. For example, if you need to collect data from three sources with 5,000 web pages each, the price will be higher than if you need to scrape contact information from one page.

Contact us, describe your scraping task, and we will send you a price for a custom solution shortly.

How long will it take to parse the required data?

It may take 1 day or more to collect data from a website, depending on the complexity and scale of your project. We agree on the deadlines and order of execution for each project individually and set different deadlines for each client.

Depending on the volume of your project, the deadlines may be longer. It is important to remember one thing – if you rush a large-scale scraping project, you may be blocked by the source site, which in turn will prolong the project, since a new scraping solution will need to be implemented.

What payment methods do you accept?

We accept non-cash payments via bank transfer.

In what format do you output the finished parsing result?

We issue the final parsing data in a tabular format – EXCEL or CSV. We can transfer data in several ways:

1. Connect a network drive and work with files in a familiar interface;
2. Access to the cloud, from where you can download files yourself;
3. Loading directly into the BI system for analytics and visualization.

Is it legal to scrape websites?

We previously wrote an article about this on our blog. The short answer is yes, scraping publicly available information from websites is legal.

Can you parse non-Russian language sites?

Yes, we certainly can. For partners, we parsed websites in English, German, French and other languages.

Do you provide additional services besides parsing?

Yes, our company works with data in many aspects. In addition to parsing, we provide data cleaning and visualization services.

Do I need to do anything else besides describing my scraping project?

No, you don’t. Our business model is data as a service. You don’t need to register on the platform or spend time creating, programming or configuring tools for data parsing.

If you choose to parse with our company, you don’t pay for software, servers or proxies, you pay for a team of developers who will ensure that you get the data you need on time.

What are the best web scraping tools?

The feasibility and use of any web scraping tool depends on the type of website and its complexity. Web scraping tools generally fall into the categories of tools that you install on your computer or in your computer’s browser (Chrome or Firefox). Web scraping tools (free or paid) and web scraping apps can be a good choice if your data requirements are low and the source websites are not complex.

If you need to extract large amounts of data from a large number of sites or the sites have a good level of protection against parsing, it is best to contact companies that will write a custom parser for your tasks. You can leave a request for parsing at the link.

Is web scraping the same as data mining?

No, but scraping is an integral part of data mining.

Data mining is the process of finding  telemarketing data patterns in large data sets, which is usually done using various machine learning solutions. This is where scraping comes in. Scraping is one of the most effective ways to collect a large amount of data, and after scraping and processing the data, you will have a data set ready for further analysis.

What is a robots.txt file?

robots.txt is a text file that is used by websites to tell crawlers, bots, or spiders whether to crawl the site, as per the site owner’s instructions. Many sites may not allow crawling or may limit the data that can be extracted from them. It is very important to analyze the robots.txt file to avoid getting banned or blacklisted when scraping.

What is the difference between web scraping and web crawling?

Parsing and crawling are related concepts. Parsing, as we have already mentioned, is the process of automatically requesting a web document or page and extracting data from it. On the other hand, web crawling is scanning, the process of finding information on the web, indexing all the words in the document, adding them to a database, and then following all the hyperlinks and indexes, and then adding this information to the database. Therefore, web scraping requires certain crawling skills.

What is a search robot and how does it work?

A web crawler, also called a spider, crawler, or spiderbot, is a program that downloads and indexes content from all over the internet. The purpose of this robot is to understand what the page is about so that it can retrieve it when needed. A web crawler is controlled by search engines. By applying search algorithms to the information collected by the robots, search engines can show users relevant links to their search query.

A search robot goes through pages on the Internet and enters them into the search engine database. It analyzes pages on the Internet, then saves them in a certain form on servers, and follows links to other pages.

How to extract data from dynamic web pages?

Data from dynamic websites can be extracted by setting up crawling of the site at a certain frequency to look for updated data. Dynamic websites update data frequently, so bots must be fast enough to not miss any updated data.

How to avoid blocking when parsing a site?

A website can block a scraper if it scrapes too much. To avoid this, you need to configure the scraper to act like a human, not a robot. Adding a delay between requests and using proxy servers can also help.

We have shared with you the most frequently asked questions about website scraping. If you have any additional questions or you have a task related to scraping that you want to solve, contact us via the feedback form, write to telegram or call by phone .