Web scraping, also known as web data extraction, refers to the automated collection of data from websites. Many companies rely on web scraping to obtain large volumes of data from across the internet to power everything from price comparison sites to market research reports.
What Kind of Data Gets Scraped
Companies scrape a wide variety of websites and online data sources such as:
The data can then be structured, analyzed and used for various business purposes.
Common Business Uses of Web Scraping
Legal and Ethical Considerations
While very useful, web scraping raises questions around copyright, terms of service violations, data privacy and "free riding" off others' work. Businesses should scrape ethically, use data responsibly, and obtain legal guidance. Overall though, web scraping has become a vital productivity tool for companies large and small across many industries.
This covers some key points on how and why companies utilize web scraping technologies to leverage the vast amount of data available online.