For any organization, access to relevant data is an essential part of the business. Every day millions of websites update themselves with data.
This has led organizations that need this data to come up with automated scripts. These scripts will collect relevant informant from different websites on the internet.
They then extract data from a website to excel and present it in an easily understandable form. With Web Crawler all of these are easily achievable.
As you can understand, the working of a web crawler is pretty complex.
Firstly, Indexing and Downloading of Various WebPages is the primary task.
Then things like HTML codes and links are validated. These days, in many cases it is Javascript codes that are used instead of HTML ones.
Depending on the type of information in question, the web crawler may need to extract images from a website or even extract text from an image.
If you have a better Web Crawler, then data gathering becomes much easier and moreover fun.
In this article, I shall throw light on some of the most popular
Types Of Web Crawler Tools.
1. Get Left
Get left is a free to use. Also, it is multilingual web scrapper that supports 14 languages. The tool comes with several options and you may choose to either download a webpage or the entire website.
A user upon launching the tool, you may enter the URL of the page you wish to visit and choose the specific files that need to be downloaded on a priority basis.
You might have been looking for options among web crawler open-source platforms. Well, Get left can be your One Stop destination.
The files cannot be downloaded recursively and that there is only limited Ftp support are the challenging points regarding this tool.
2. Visual Scraper
There are still many people who are not well versed with coding. So, Visual Scrapper is a preferred web crawler tool because of its point-and-click interface.
The extracted data can be saved as JSON, SQL or XML files as per your requirements.
Visual s rapper comes with a scheduling option where you can have your projects on one or more web pages being scheduled to run at a pre-determined time.
Thus, this web scraping application is appropriate in cases where one can extract updates from a forum or website periodically.
3. Dexi.io
Dexi.io is browser-based and is the best option for people looking for online data scrapers.
It has dedicated tools such as the Extractor, Crawler, and Pipes to cater to your data crawling needs. Once you have logged in and extracted the data, the same will be hosted on Dexi.io’s local servers for a fortnight.
Post that the data will be archived so that if you need to retrieve them at a later date, the same can be done without much hassle. If a user wants to save extracted data, he can save it as JSON or CSV files.
4. 80legs
The database consists of large sample sets when it comes to larger authorized bodies concerned. This would mean scraping through several websites at a go.
For situations like this, 80legs allow users to configure customized requirements.
It has the ability to scrap large amount of data in a matter of seconds.
The biggest advantage of opting for 80legs is the fact that it is immensely powerful and provides high-performance data scraping suitable for larger establishments.
5. Netpeak Spider
If you need to scrape through websites that have millions of webpages worth of data, Netpeak Spider is a preferred option. This is available as a desktop tool that you can use for a quick search for issues with optimal RAM utilization.
Netpeak spider allows Contains search, RegExp Search, CSS Selector Search, and Xpath. That way, the user has a lot of flexibility concerning the amount of customization.
With this web data extractor, you can get the exact information that you are looking to scrap at a much faster rate than that of most other tools.
Other than web scraping, Netpeak spider is also a preferred choice for the systematic analysis of daily SEO audit.
6. Helium Scraper
Not all users need a high-end powerful scrapping tool. In cases where there is a smaller association between the elements, Helium Scraper works the best. To use this, there is no need to configure it on your system.
You can simply log on and choose from a range of pre-designed templates.
This is a visual software that is simple to use and does not require any hi-end computing or scraping knowledge.
Laymen can learn how to web scrape on the helium scraper without having to learn to code.
However, this is suitable for only basic web scraping and the tool will not be of much use. Specifically when one has to scrap through the latest strong encrypted data.
7. ParseHub
ParseHub is based on machine learning that utilizes Javascript, AJAX technologies, etc. Here, the web document in question is first to read, then analyzed and transformed into data that will be useful for the user
One may either choose to use the inbuilt web app or download the desktop app.
The desktop app supports Mac OS, Linux, and Windows. The free version of ParseHub is apt for people who have less than 5 private web crawling projects.
How We Can Contribute To Your Business?
If your organization needs greater web scrapping to be done, it is recommended that you go for the premium paid subscription of ParseHub.
With so many different data extraction tools available, it is indeed a challenge to identify which of these would be the most suitable for your needs.
I’m [ Faruque Azam ] an expert web scraping consultant and I will identify the needs of your organization and select the best tools to get the job done.
Reach out to me to make the most of my experience in the field and get your organization the relevant data that you had always wanted.
