Data is the new oil? You don’t even need a rig to mine data, unlike crude oil. You will need scrapers or crawlers.
This review will focus on Scraping Robot, a web scraper tool. We’ll examine how it works and the value it can bring to you.
Scraping Robot promises that you will save time and find meaningful work opportunities by not having to spend endless hours manually collecting data from social networks, e-commerce sources and websites.
The data you collect can be used to gain better insights into your business, market research and stay ahead of those who aren’t scraping.
What is web scraping? How does it work? And how can you ethically use it?
Let’s find out.
What is Web Scraping?
You are scraping the web when you copy data from a website into a spreadsheet, database or other central location. It can be tedious to do this manually, so software solutions are a good choice.
Web crawlers can be used to automate the data collection process. Web scraping can also be called web harvesting, web data extraction.
Any of these eight methods can be used to web scrape:
- Document Object Model (DOM) parsing
- HTML parsing
- Human copy-and paste
- Vertical aggregation
- Matching text patterns
- Semantic annotation recognizing
- Analysis of web pages by computer vision
- Programming via HTTP
We won’t go into detail about each step. You can gather data from websites in many ways.
8 Ethical Web Scrapers’ Habits
Web scraping’s ethics is the biggest reason to stop it. Bad actors will profit from web scraping just like any other leverage, such as money or the internet.
It’s a good idea to use web scraping ethically. It all comes down to your moral standards.
What is web scraping used for ethical purposes?
1. Honor the Robots Exclusion Standards
Robots Exclusion Standard, or robots.txt shows web crawlers where they can crawl a site.
It is the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) that governs crawlers’ access to a site.
When crawling a site, don’t forget the rules.txt file.
2. Prioritize the use of an API
Use the API if a website provides an API so that you don’t need to scrape their data. You would be following the rules set forth by the site owner when you use an API.
3. Respect other people’s terms and conditions
Respect fair use policies and terms and conditions of accessing data on websites that have them. If they have made it clear about their desires, respect them.
4. Scrape during Off-Peak Hours
You shouldn’t place requests on a site that is busy. You might not only be causing financial problems, but you could also send a false message to the site owner by requesting information when the site is busy.
5. Add a User Agent String
Consider adding a user agent string to your site scraper to help you identify yourself and make it easier for people to reach you. If a site administrator notices an unusually high level of traffic, they will know immediately.
6. Get Permission First
Asking permission is an important step before you start scrapping the user-agent string. Before you start scraping it, ask for permission. Inform the owner that you are going to use a scraper for their data.
7. Take Care of the Content and Respect the Data
You should be honest about how you use the data. Only take the data that you are interested in and only scrape sites when you absolutely need it. If you have not been granted permission to access the data, you should not share it with anyone else.
8. When possible, credit where possible
Share their content on social media and give credit to them when you use their work. You can also do something to increase traffic to the site.
Start with Scraping Robot
What can you expect from Scraping Robot
I will guide you through the software step-by-step.
My first step was to sign up for an account at Scraping Robot. To begin the process, I clicked on Sign up.
The form was completed by me.
It brings me to a dashboard, where I can begin using the scraper.
You’ll land on the same page regardless of whether you click the blue Create Project button, or the side menu select Module Library.
How Scraping Robot Works
Scraping Robot gives users 5000 free scrapes every month. If you have a small data set, this is enough. However, if you need more scrapes, you will be charged $0.0018 per scrape.
Here is the Scraping Robot process.
Step 1: Submit your Scraping Request
Select the module that best suits your needs and then submit your data request. The Scraping Robot will then use this information to start the scraping process.
Step #2: Scraping Robot Accesses Blazing SEO
Blazing SEO and Scraping Robot have teamed up to offer proxies that will handle every scraping request. Blazing SEO provides unused proxies, while Scraping Robot’s software manages the scraping.
Step #3: Run Your Scraping Request
Scraping Robot will run your request using as many unused proxy servers from Blazing SEO as possible. Scraping Robot will do this in order to complete your request as quickly and efficiently as possible. Scraping Robot’s goal is to complete your request quickly and efficiently so that you can review your results and start new requests.
Step 4: Make Payment for Your Scrapbooking
Blazing SEO and Scraping Robot have forged a partnership which allows them to offer their scraping services at a very affordable price.
Step #5: Scraping Robots’ Guarantee
Scraping Robot claims a “Guarantee” that will provide support for any product-related issues. However, they didn’t offer any guarantees. It is not clear whether you will receive a money back guarantee.
Pre-Built Modules
Scraping Robot offers pre-built modules that allow you to scrape websites quickly and easily. There are 15 modules already built into the scraper. Let’s take a look at each one.
Google Modules
Two pre-built Google modules are available for the scraper:
- Google Places Scraper
- Google Scraper
These are the steps to use Google Places Scraper
- Name your scraping project
- Enter a keyword or location
For example, I typed the keyword “Calgary rent”, in the keyword box.
Then, I entered Calgary (Alberta, Canada) in the locations menu. The menu is located just below the keyword box.
To start scrapping, I clicked on the blue Start Scraping button.
It returned my results after a few seconds.
Clicking on Show results will bring up the complete results.
Click More Results to see all the results. The CSV file contained more information than what I had seen in the dashboard. These additional data include addresses, closing hours, number of Google reviews, ratings, and phone numbers.
I received 20 reports totalling places that rank for this keyword.
The Google Scraper module will give you the top 100 URLs Google has for a particular keyword. This process is the same as Google Places Scraper.
This is the bad news: Scraping Robot did not list the websites of the Google Place Scraper sites.
Indeed, Modules
There are three submodules to the Indeed module.
- Indeed, Job Scraper
- Scraper by Indeed Company
- Salary scraper!
The Job Scraper allows you to scrape job listings for a specific area based on keywords or the company name.
The Company review module allows you to extract and export company ratings, reviews, and other scores. Enter the project name and the company name to search for all data. Fill out the form to get salary data.
Amazon Scraper
You can use the Amazon scraper module to get pricing data. Simply enter an Amazon product URL or ASIN and you will receive pricing data.
HTML Scraper
If you provide the URL, the HTML scraper module will allow you to grab all HTML data from any page. You can use this scraper to extract any data from the internet for storage, or to analyze it for data points that are important to you.
Instagram Scraper
You can use any Instagram username, URL or profile to access the data of an Instagram user using the Instagram scraper module. The information you will receive includes the total number of posts made by users, their total followers, and details about the 12 most recent posts.
Facebook Scraper
You can use the Facebook scraper module to gather public information about an organisation based on data taken from their Facebook page.
This data can be accessed using the username of the user or their complete Facebook page URL.
Scraping Robot can help you:
- Username
- Rating
- Recommendations
- Likes
- Follow us
- Check-ins
- URL
- Timestamp
- Comment
- Shares
- Reactions
Walmart Product Scraper
To gather information on prices, descriptions, and titles of products, you can use the Walmart Product Scraper. To get the data that you need, enter a Walmart URL.
Scraping Robot advises that you contact them if there is any additional data that you require. They will add it.
Aliexpress Product Scraper
AliExpress Product Scraper is similar to the Walmart Module. Users can enter a product URL and get price, title, description, and description data. To get more data points, users can submit a custom request for Scraping Robot.
Home Depot Product Scraper
Our Home Depot Product Scraper will accept a product URL as input and will output the following information: title, description, price, and more Contact us if you require additional information.
More Pre-Built Modules
Scraping Robot offers a variety of pre-built modules to generate similar data outputs. Each module includes title, price and description data. Other modules that aren’t eCommerce-focused provide profile data for users.
- eBay Product Scraper
- Wayfair Product Scraper
- Twitter Profile Scraper
- Yellowpages Scraper
- Crunchbase Company Scraper
Request Custom Module
This option can be requested. Clicking this link will take you to the Contact Us page. Scraping Robot can arrange for a custom scraping service.
Here are the steps to get custom modules from Scraping Robot.
First: Tell them what process you want to automate, and then break it down step by step
Step 2: Scraping Robot will create a proposal based upon your request and provide you with a price estimate.
Step 3: You will approve or deny the proposal and quotation.
Step 4: You’ll agree to the proposal and pay Scraping Robot.
Step #5 – You will receive your customized scraping software solution once Scraping Robot has completed the development.
Additional Scraping Robot Functions and Features
Scraping Robot has more features than pre-built modules. Let’s take a look at them.
API
Scraping Robot’s API allows developers to access data at scale. This API will reduce the stress and worry that comes with managing servers, proxy services, and developer resources.
You can access your Scraping Robot account to find your API Key as well as an API documentation page. You don’t have any API usage restrictions, except credit limits.
Demos Library
You can see how each module works in the demos library. This library can be used to demonstrate the software’s functionality.
Module Filter
Because the module filter is still in development, the click-to filter function only has the search engine filter at this time of review, it seems that the module filter might be a feature in the future. We can also expect product filters and profile filters to be added in the future.
Roadmap
Roadmap allows users to see the features Scraping Robot intends to launch in future, or those that users suggest. These features can be divided into three categories: Live, In Progress, and Planned.
Scraping Robot users can vote up and suggest features.
You’ll also find on the pricing page that Scraping Robot promises to continue adding new modules.
Pricing
To meet most people’s scrape needs, it offers 5,000 free scrapes each month. It’s $0.0018 for more scrape.
Scraping Robot claims they can offer such a low price due to their partnership with premium proxy provider .
Get in touch
You will not see any contact information on Scraping Robots’ website, but you can send a message using their contact form.
The floating Help widget can be found in the corner of most pages.
To access the form, click on the widget. Fill out the form to send us your message.
Happy Scrapping — Wrap up
Every day, we generate a lot of data. IBM estimates that there are 2.5 quintillions worth of data generated every day. This is 2.5 Terabytes.
Yes, you have plenty of data to make better business and growth choices.
Scraping Robot is a cost-effective way to collect data and build intelligence in your company.
Risk-free: The experience is made easy by the 5,000 scraping units. Before you commit to any financial investment, you can start scraping to test your business case.
You don’t want your scraping to be illegal or get in trouble with the law. Scraping should be done with the highest ethical standards.
