Web scraping, as we know, is the act of extracting user data from the internet with the intent of using it for commercial or business purposes. That is why giants like Google, Apple, Bing, etc. rely on web scraping to gain commercial advantage over their competitors by stealing leads, driving sales, hijacking campaigns, monitoring prices and redirecting APIs.

The search engines rely on automated web scrapers to pull out information—a process similar to web indexing. While traditional scrapers are powerful business tools, there are certain restrictions on them:

  • Web crawling software is difficult to maintain.
  • HTML parsers fail every time a website changes their design, as they follow the same format to analyze pages.
  • RSS scrapers derive info from feeds but they fail when websites update or move their feeds frequently.

In a nutshell, old-fashioned scrapers assume that the internet will stay static, and they follow a pre-defined protocol to scrape information. Here is why you need automated web scrapers to do the job!

  1. Every day, the internet receives quintillion bytes of information using web reviews, industry statistics, social media chats, demographic surveys and transaction files. Extracting and managing the entire data manually is almost impossible. Web scraping tools can easily perform this task in a jiffy.
  2. Once the info is collected, arranging and customizing it for individual needs is a time-consuming and tedious task. Automated scrapers simplify and speed up the task of data collection, sorting and reporting.
  3. Harnessing vital specifics of the competitor’s data, like pricing trends, inventory management and availability of products is important to retail and e-commerce industry. It helps them in setting their pricing and promotion strategies to stay ahead of the competition.
  4. Scrapers collect just the data that is required—especially for pricing, promotion, and distribution. There is a minimum possibility for error and duplicity.
  5. The ease with which you get data boosts your confidence and helps you in making important decisions and revisions.

Considering all these applications of automated web scraper, it’s safe to say that nearly all global businesses need this reliable and credible tool to manage their commercial data. You just need to search for a tool that best suits your requirements.