Today, data is the biggest asset of any organization. More and more organizations are taking web scraping to make the most of the data that is available on the internet.
Now there are a number of small organizations and startups that have been using web scraping for years. By drawing inferences from the data obtained from scraping, their businesses have grown in shape and form.
With this, most organizations have it on their top priority to scale up their data extraction process to accommodate the changing business model.
However, the process of scraping data on a larger scale presents a host of new challenges. In this article, I will tell you what they are and how you can guide your business to a smooth transition.
1. Dynamic Website Structure
In the past, most websites were simple HTML. The process of Html scraping is simple and can be carried out in a matter of seconds. However, these days, most websites use Javascript.
If one has to obtain data from a website that is written in Ajax or javascript, a host of complex libraries will be needed.
2. Slow Loading
With the amount of data available online, organizations prefer scraping through a greater number of websites in order to generate results with higher accuracy.
The time taken to extract data from a website will be higher, if more number of sites the scrapper has to go through.
In the case of expanding organizations, it often happens that the amount of data that needs to be scraped increases. But the local system on which web scraping takes place remains unaltered. This leads to excessive resource utilization on the local system.
In comes cases, this results in system breakdown causing immense loss to the organization.
3. Data Warehousing
When the scale of data crawling is increased by a good amount, it presents a host of warehousing challenges. In their initial days, most startups and small organizations do not have a large budget for data warehousing.
However, as the business expands, organizations employ more advanced data scraping software and go for large scale extraction. This generates a huge volume of data.
Many a time, this data is highly sensitive in nature. So the secure storage of the same poses a challenge for growing organizations.
This creates a deadlock as using existing systems is nit feasible and initiating a complete transfer of data from existing warehousing facilities poses time and monetary challenges.
4. Anti-scraping Processes
These days, an increasing number of websites are using Captcha for authentication purposes.
The use of behind-the-log-in techniques is frequently applied to keep spam away. However, these do not allow basic to get past them.
There are modern anti-scraping techniques that use complex coding algorithms. So that to come up with a website extractor that can go past such authentication screens.
The workaround requires a good technical understanding and a detailed understanding of web scrapping JavaScript. Professional expertise and years of experience come in handy here.
Thus as you can see, if you are not careful, your organization may have to pay the price for improper scaling of your web scraping services.
The growth story of your organization has heavily relied on business decisions. Specifically decisions made on the basis of data collected by scraping numerous competitor websites.
If you want the growth story to continue, it is important that you hire professionals to help you scale your scraping methods.
Hiring a professional service provider to help you extract data from a website is a smart move. As you will then have access to the advantages of cloud extraction which you can capitalize at your potentials.
That way, up to 20 websites can be scrapped at a time. Hence, saving your organization a good amount of resources. To scrap each website a single cloud can be used.
5. Organization Expectations
Once that is completed, the collated data that has been extracted is sent back to your account once that is completed. That way, when you are building a business model based on competitor data. Consequently you will have access to a wider pool and thereby be in a better position to make a decision.
For an organization that is scaling up things, this will allow one the luxury of growing at a pace that one is comfortable with.
The quantity of extracted data for any organisation will also increase as the company expands. There will be some websites whose data is of special importance to you.
If you go for in-house web scraping with python, it will take your team a long time to figure out the appropriate scraping speed that will curtail the chances of being blocked.
Third-party web scrapping service providers have greater experience in cloud extraction.
An organization that is continuously expanding its horizons would not want to gamble all that it possesses. That’s where the need of a professional comes.
Never engage in any illegal activities while scaling up your business.
No copyright infringement on your part should occur as scraping is ubiquitous.
By seeking the help of qualified professionals like me [Mr. Faruque Azam], you will ensure that all your web scrapping hurdles in the path of business expansion are dealt with efficiently.
By having this load off your shoulders, you will be able to channelize all your efforts into the growth of your business. Consequently you will see your organization become what you had always dreamt of.
