Getting processed data to run professional and commercial websites is a big understatement since information is the bloodline of any organization. The power of information for running a business already emphasized and agreed upon equivocally at all levels, activities like web scraping to get and process information has earned renewed importance and relevance in the present scenario.
Through web scraping basically, enterprises can take on their competitors by harnessing the power of information more rigorously. There are too many solutions that the web scraping industry works with. Even mobile app developers are now building data extraction services for the web. These solutions can be categorized into three types, respectively, as follows.
● Developing the company-owned data extraction software or mobile app.
● Getting the help of third-party web scraping services.
● Buying from the market a simple data extraction software.
While each of these solutions has its respective pros and cons, to date, the most suitable solution has been building software or mobile app to serve the purpose of the company.
What is web scraping?
Web scraping is nothing but the process of extracting relevant data from various websites and web resources and presenting the sourced data into a particular format. The scraped data from the process is generally presented through a spreadsheet or a database. With so much relevance of the information for business-specific data, web scraping is bound to gain importance for organizations of all types across the niches.
Key data extraction challenges
Now that the importance of data extraction through processes like web scraping is already clear to us, we need to focus on the major and key challenges for data extraction. As we have mentioned, all the types of data extraction processes have their pros and cons. We need to see these challenges only in this light.
Companies can use a generic third-party data extraction tool, hire a third-party vendor for scraping web data or can develop custom software or mobile app for the purpose of data extraction. All three types of solutions have their own kind of cost components and pros and cons. Let’s take each of these solutions one by one.
If you buy a genetic data extraction software or app, it is the most inexpensive and affordable solution as you need to pay for it once and for all. But at the same time since these tools are not built keeping your specific data extraction requirements in mind, or as they are not frequently updated with value additions, they are less reliable for fulfilling the data needs of the company.
If you want to hire data scraping professionals to carry out the extraction tasks, it may be a little expensive but you can be in far better control and can devise the solution as per your needs. On the other hand, hiring data scraping professionals can be very expensive compared to the generic tools.
Lastly, you can always opt for the custom-built data-scraping software or mobile apps built to serve the purpose of your company. Obviously, building such software can be expensive but the best solution your business can think of. You can hire expert Android app developers who will create an app conceptualized and designed for your business needs.
Web Scraping in the Era of AI
Artificial Intelligence, which is already dominating the technology space, has now come with the promise of data extraction from the web easier than ever before. AI bots and algorithms equipped to learn from the typical business requirements over time can scrape valuable data from the web without or with least human involvement. The automation perpetuated by AI and Machine Learning technology will help to fulfill the data extraction needs of businesses more efficiently.
What Can Google Do in Web Scrapping?
Well, Google remains to be the biggest web scraper as the search engine giant has to scrape the entire web every minute to deliver search results and make propositions as per various parameters and for various services. So, as the service provider for data extraction from the web, there cannot be a better option than Google.
Many experts are of the opinion that Google in the time to come can come up with its web scraping services for the enterprises. Since this is something that relates to the core business and potential of Google, the enterprises can expect the highest expertise at a very competitive price. Most of the odds are in favor of Google to become the biggest giant in web scrapping services as well.
What about data security?
Last but not least of all the above considerations is data security and its incoherent relationships with the web scraping. As websites are now built in a more secure manner with several security protocols and authentication practices, many web scraping tools often may not be able to extract website data easily. This is why, for many websites, custom-built web scraping services play such an important role.
Conclusion
From the above-mentioned discussion, it is quite clear that web scraping or data extraction from the web is crucial for countless businesses. The importance is continuously growing, and enterprises are increasingly making budget and resource provisions for this. In this respect, one always needs to remember that enterprises need to adopt web scraping services that are cut to their organizational constraints and specific needs.