Data Scraping - What Are Hand-Scraped Hardwood Floors and What Are the Benefits?

If you love the look of hardwood flooring with lots of character, then you may want to check out hand-scraped hardwood flooring. Hand-scraped wood provides a warm vintage look, providing the floor instant character. These types of scraped hardwoods are suitable for living rooms, dining rooms, hallways and bedrooms. But what exactly is hand-scraped hardwood flooring?

Well, it is literally what you think it is. Hand-scraped hardwood flooring is created by hand using specialized wood working tools to make each board unique and giving an overall "old worn" appearance.

At Innovation Builders we offer solid wood floors finished on site with an actual hand-scraping technique followed by stain and sealer. Solid wood floors are installed by an expert team of technicians who work each board with skilled craftsman-like attention to detail. Following the scraping procedure the floor is stained by hand with a customer selected stain color, and then protected with multiple coats of sealing and finishing polyurethane. This finishing process of staining, sealing and coating the wood floors contributes to providing the look and durability of an old reclaimed wood floor, but with today's tough, urethane finishes.

There are many, many benefits to hand-scraped wood flooring. Overall, these floors are extremely durable and hard wearing, providing years of trouble-free use. These wood floors remain looking newer for longer because the texture that the process provides hides the typical dents, dings and scratches that other floors can't hide so easily. That's great news for households with kids, dogs, and cats.

These types of wood flooring have another unique advantage as well. When you do scratch these floors during their lifetime, the scratches are easily repaired. As long as the scratch isn't too deep you can make them practically disappear without ever having to hire a professional. It's simple to hide the scratch by using a color-matched stain marker or repair kit that is readily available through local flooring distributors. These features make hand-scraped hardwood flooring a lot more durable and hassle-free to maintain than other types of wood flooring.

The expert processes utilized in the creation of these floors provides a custom look of worn wood with deep color and subtle highlights. When the light hits the wood at different times during the day, it provides an understated but powerful effect of depth and beauty. They instantly offer your rooms a rustic look full of character, allowing your home to become a warm and inviting environment. The rustic look of this wood provides a texture, style and rustic appeal that cannot be matched by any other type of flooring.

Hand-Scraped Hardwood Flooring is a floor that says welcome and adds a touch of elegance to any home. If you are looking to buy a new home and you haven't had the opportunity to see or feel hand scraped hardwoods, stop in any of the model homes at Innovation Builders in Keller, North Richland Hills or Grand Prairie, Texas and check it out!

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Are-Hand-Scraped-Hardwood-Floors-and-What-Are-the-Benefits?&id=6026646

Web scraping in under 60 seconds: the magic of import.io

Import.io is a very powerful and easy-to-use tool for data extraction that has the aim of getting data from any website in a structured way. It is meant for non-programmers that need data (and for programmers who don’t want to overcomplicate their lives).

I almost forgot!! Apart from everything, it is also a free tool (o_O)

The purpose of this post is to teach you how to scrape a website and make a dataset and/or API in under 60 seconds. Are you ready?

It’s very simple. You just have to go to http://magic.import.io; post the URL of the site you want to scrape, and push the “GET DATA” button. Yes! It is that simple! No plugins, downloads, previous knowledge or registration are necessary. You can do this from any browser; it even works on tablets and smartphones.

For example: if we want to have a table with the information on all items related to Chewbacca on MercadoLibre (a Latin American version of eBay), we just need to go to that site and make a search – then copy and paste the link (http://listado.mercadolibre.com.mx/chewbacca) on Import.io, and push the “GET DATA” button.

You’ll notice that now you have all the information on a table, and all you need to do is remove the columns you don’t need. To do this, just place the mouse pointer on top of the column you want to delete, and an “X” will appear.

Good news for those of us who are a bit more technically-oriented! There is a button that says “GET API” and this one is good to, well, generate an API that will update the data on each request. For this you need to create an account (which is also free of cost).

As you saw, we can scrape any website in under 60 seconds, even if it includes tons of results pages. This truly is magic, no? For more complex things that require logins, entering subwebs, automatized searches, et cetera, there is downloadable import.io software… But I’ll explain that in a different post.

Source: http://schoolofdata.org/2014/12/09/web-scraping-in-under-60-seconds-the-magic-of-import-io/

Web Scraping Services : Making Modern File Formats More Accessible

Data scraping is the process of automatically sorting through information contained on the internet inside html, PDF or other documents and collecting relevant information to into databases and spreadsheets for later retrieval. On most websites, the text is easily and accessibly written in the source code but an increasing number of businesses are using Adobe PDF format (Portable Document Format: A format which can be viewed by the free Adobe Acrobat software on almost any operating system. See below for a link.). The advantage of PDF format is that the document looks exactly the same no matter which computer you view it from making it ideal for business forms, specification sheets, etc.; the disadvantage is that the text is converted into an image from which you often cannot easily copy and paste. PDF Scraping is the process of data scraping information contained in PDF files. To PDF scrape a PDF document, you must employ a more diverse set of tools.

There are two main types of PDF files: those built from a text file and those built from an image (likely scanned in). Adobe's own software is capable of PDF scraping from text-based PDF files but special tools are needed for PDF scraping text from image-based PDF files. The primary tool for PDF scraping is the OCR program. OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, programs scan a document for small pictures that they can separate into letters. These pictures are then compared to actual letters and if matches are found, the letters are copied into a file. OCR programs can perform PDF scraping of image-based PDF files quite accurately but they are not perfect.

Once the OCR program or Adobe program has finished PDF scraping a document, you can search through the data to find the parts you are most interested in. This information can then be stored into your favorite database or spreadsheet program. Some PDF scraping programs can sort the data into databases and/or spreadsheets automatically making your job that much easier.

Quite often you will not find a PDF scraping program that will obtain exactly the data you want without customization. Surprisingly a search on Google only turned up one business, that will create a customized PDF scraping utility for your project. A handful of off the shelf utilities claim to be customizable, but seem to require a bit of programming knowledge and time commitment to use effectively. Obtaining the data yourself with one of these tools may be possible but will likely prove quite tedious and time consuming. It may be advisable to contract a company that specializes in PDF scraping to do it for you quickly and professionally.

Let's explore some real world examples of the uses of PDF scraping technology. A group at Cornell University wanted to improve a database of technical documents in PDF format by taking the old PDF file where the links and references were just images of text and changing the links and references into working clickable links thus making the database easy to navigate and cross-reference. They employed a PDF scraping utility to deconstruct the PDF files and figure out where the links were. They then could create a simple script to re-create the PDF files with working links replacing the old text image.

A computer hardware vendor wanted to display specifications data for his hardware on his website. He hired a company to perform PDF scraping of the hardware documentation on the manufacturers' website and save the PDF scraped data into a database he could use to update his webpage automatically.

PDF Scraping is just collecting information that is available on the public internet. PDF Scraping does not violate copyright laws.

PDF Scraping is a great new technology that can significantly reduce your workload if it involves retrieving information from PDF files. Applications exist that can help you with smaller, easier PDF Scraping projects but companies exist that will create custom applications for larger or more intricate PDF Scraping jobs.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?PDF-Scraping:-Making-Modern-File-Formats-More-Accessible&id=193321

Data Scraping Services - Scraping Yelp Business Data With Python Scraping Script

Yelp is a great source of business contact information with details like address, postal code, contact information; website addresses etc. that other site like Google Maps just does not. Yelp also provides reviews about the particular business. The yelp business database can be useful for telemarketing, email marketing and lead generation.

Are you looking for yelp business details database? Are you looking for scraping data from yelp website/business directory? Are you looking for yelp screen scraping software? Are you looking for scraping the business contact information from the online Yelp? Then you are at the right place.

Here I am going to discuss how to scrape yelp data for lead generation and email marketing. I have made a simple and straight forward yelp data scraping script in python that can scrape data from yelp website. You can use this yelp scraper script absolutely free.

I have used urllib, BeautifulSoup packages. Urllib package to make http request and parsed the HTML using BeautifulSoup, used Threads to make the scraping faster.

Yelp Scraping Python Script

import urllib from bs4 import BeautifulSoup import re from threading import Thread #List of yelp urls to scrape url=['http://www.yelp.com/biz/liman-fisch-restaurant-hamburg','http://www.yelp.com/biz/casa-franco-caramba-hamburg','http://www.yelp.com/biz/o-ren-ishii-hamburg','http://www.yelp.com/biz/gastwerk-hotel-hamburg-hamburg-2','http://www.yelp.com/biz/superbude-hamburg-2','http://www.yelp.com/biz/hotel-hafen-hamburg-hamburg','http://www.yelp.com/biz/hamburg-marriott-hotel-hamburg','http://www.yelp.com/biz/yoho-hamburg'] i=0 #function that will do actual scraping job def scrape(ur): html = urllib.urlopen(ur).read() soup = BeautifulSoup(html) title = soup.find('h1',itemprop="name") saddress = soup.find('span',itemprop="streetAddress") postalcode = soup.find('span',itemprop="postalCode") print title.text print saddress.text print postalcode.text print "-------------------" threadlist = [] #making threads while i<len(url): t = Thread(target=scrape,args=(url[i],)) t.start() threadlist.append(t) i=i+1 for b in
threadlist: b.join()

import urllib

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

import re

from threading import Thread

 #List of yelp urls to scrape

url=['http://www.yelp.com/biz/liman-fisch-restaurant-hamburg','http://www.yelp.com/biz/casa-franco-caramba-hamburg','http://www.yelp.com/biz/o-ren-ishii-hamburg','http://www.yelp.com/biz/gastwerk-hotel-hamburg-hamburg-2','http://www.yelp.com/biz/superbude-hamburg-2','http://www.yelp.com/biz/hotel-hafen-hamburg-hamburg','http://www.yelp.com/biz/hamburg-marriott-hotel-hamburg','http://www.yelp.com/biz/yoho-hamburg']

 i=0

#function that will do actual scraping job

def scrape(ur):

           html = urllib.urlopen(ur).read()

          soup = BeautifulSoup(html)

       title = soup.find('h1',itemprop="name")

          saddress = soup.find('span',itemprop="streetAddress")

          postalcode = soup.find('span',itemprop="postalCode")

          print title.text

          print saddress.text

          print postalcode.text

          print "-------------------"

 threadlist = []

#making threads

while i<len(url):

          t = Thread(target=scrape,args=(url[i],))

          t.start()

          threadlist.append(t)

          i=i+1

for b in threadlist:

          b.join()

Recently I had worked for one German company and did yelp scraping project for them and delivered data as per their requirement. If you looking for scraping data from business directories like yelp then send me your requirement and I will get back to you with sample.

Source: http://webdata-scraping.com/scraping-yelp-business-data-python-scraping-script/

Web Scraping Services : What are the ethics of web scraping?

Someone recently asked: "Is web scraping an ethical concept?" I believe that web scraping is absolutely an ethical concept. Web scraping (or screen scraping) is a mechanism to have a computer read a website. There is absolutely no technical difference between an automated computer viewing a website and a human-driven computer viewing a website. Furthermore, if done correctly, scraping can provide many benefits to all involved.

There are a bunch of great uses for web scraping. First, services like Instapaper, which allow saving content for reading on the go, use screen scraping to save a copy of the website to your phone. Second, services like Mint.com, an app which tells you where and how you are spending your money, uses screen scraping to access your bank's website (all with your permission). This is useful because banks do not provide many ways for programmers to access your financial data, even if you want them to. By getting access to your data, programmers can provide really interesting visualizations and insight into your spending habits, which can help you save money.

That said, web scraping can veer into unethical territory. This can take the form of reading websites much quicker than a human could, which can cause difficulty for the servers to handle it. This can cause degraded performance in the website. Malicious hackers use this tactic in what’s known as a "Denial of Service" attack.

Another aspect of unethical web scraping comes in what you do with that data. Some people will scrape the contents of a website and post it as their own, in effect stealing this content. This is a big no-no for the same reasons that taking someone else's book and putting your name on it is a bad idea. Intellectual property, copyright and trademark laws still apply on the internet and your legal recourse is much the same. People engaging in web scraping should make every effort to comply with the stated terms of service for a website. Even when in compliance with those terms, you should take special care in ensuring your activity doesn't affect other users of a website.

One of the downsides to screen scraping is it can be a brittle process. Minor changes to the backing website can often leave a scraper completely broken. Herein lies the mechanism for prevention: making changes to the structure of the code of your website can wreak havoc on a screen scraper's ability to extract information. Periodically making changes that are invisible to the user but affect the content of the code being returned is the most effective mechanism to thwart screen scrapers. That said, this is only a set-back. Authors of screen scrapers can always update them and, as there is no technical difference between a computer-backed browser and a human-backed browser, there's no way to 100% prevent access.

Going forward, I expect screen scraping to increase. One of the main reasons for screen scraping is that the underlying website doesn't have a way for programmers to get access to the data they want. As the number of programmers (and the need for programmers) increases over time, so too will the need for data sources. It is unreasonable to expect every company to dedicate the resources to build a programmer-friendly access point. Screen scraping puts the onus of data extraction on the programmer, not the company with the data, which can work out well for all involved.

Source: https://quickleft.com/blog/is-web-scraping-ethical/

Improving performance for web scraping code

2 down vote favorite

I have a website in which the code scrapes other websites for getting the accurate data. While the code works good but there a decent lag in performance because the code firsts downloads the html stream from various sites(some times 9 websites), extracts the relative part and then renders the html page.

What should I do to get an optimal performance. Should I change from shared hosting (godaddy) to my own server or it has nothing to do with my hosting and I need to make changes to my code?

1 Answer

API/CSV

Ask those websites if they provide an API, or, if you don't need an up-to-date information or the information you need doesn't change frequently, if they can sell/give you for free the data itself (for example in an CSV file). Some small websites may have fancier ways to access data, like a CSV file for the older information, and an RSS feed for the changed one.

Those websites would probably be happy to help you, since providing you with an API would reduce their own CPU and bandwidth usage by you.

Profile

Screen scrapping is really ugly when it comes to performance and scaling. You may be limited by:

    your machine performance, since parsing, sometimes an invalid HTML file, takes time,

    your network speed,

    their network speed usage, i.e. how fast can you access the pages of their website depending on the restrictions they set, like the DOS protection and the number of requests per second for screen scrappers and search engine crawlers,

    their machine performance: if they spend 500 ms. to generate every page, you can't do anything to reduce this delay.

If, despite your requests to them, those websites cannot provide any convenient way to access their data, but they give you a written consent to screen scrape their website, then profile your code to determine the bottleneck. It may be the internet speed. It may be your database queries. It may be anything.

For example, you may discover that you spend too much time finding with regular expressions the relevant information in the received HTML. In that case, you would want to stop doing it wrong and use a parser instead of regular expressions, then see how this improve the performance.

You may also find that the bottleneck is the time the remote server spends generating every page. In this case, there is nothing to do: you may have the fastest server, the fastest connection and the most optimized code, the performance will be the same.

Do things in parallel:

Remember to use parallel computing wisely and to always profile what you're doing, instead of doing premature optimization, in hope that you're smarter than the profiler.

Especially when it comes to using network, you may be very surprised. For example, you may believe that making more requests in parallel will be faster, but as Steve Gibson explains in episode 345 of Security Now, this is not always the case.

Legal aspects

Also note that screen scrapping is explicitly forbidden by the conditions of use (like on IMDB) on many websites. And if nothing is said on this subject in conditions of use, it doesn't mean that you can screen scrape those websites.

The fact that the information is available publicly on the internet doesn't give you the right to copy and reuse it this way neither.

Why? you may ask. For two reasons:

    Most websites are relying on advertisement and marketing. When people use one of those websites directly, they waste some CPU/network bandwidth of the website, but in response, they may click on an ad or buy something sold on the website. When you screen scrape, your bot waste their CPU/network bandwidth, but will never click on an ad or buy something.

    Displaying the information you screen scrapped on your website can have even worse effects. Example: in France, there are two major websites selling hardware. The first one is easy and fast to use, has a nice visual design, better SEO, and in general is very well done. The second one is a crap, but the prices are lower. If you screen scrape them and give the raw results (prices with links) to your users, they will obviously click on the lower price every time, which means that the website with pretty design will have less chances to sell the products.

    People made an effort in collecting, processing and displaying some data. Sometimes they paid to get it. Why would they enjoy seeing you pulling this data conveniently and for free?

Source: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141403/improving-performance-for-web-scraping-code/141406#141406

5 tips for scraping big websites

Scraping bigger websites can be a challenge if done the wrong way.

Bigger websites would have more data, more security and more pages. We’ve learned a lot from our years of crawling such large complex websites, and these tips could help solve some of your challenges

1. Cache pages visited for scraping

When scraping big websites, its always a good idea to cache the data you have already downloaded. So you don’t have to put load on the website again, in case you have start over again or that page is required again during scraping. Its effortless to cache to a key value store like redis.But Databases and filesystem caches are also good.

2. Don’t flood the website with large number of parallel requests , take it slow

Big websites posses algorithms to detect webscraping, large number of parallel requests from the same ip address will identify you as a Denial Of Service Attack on their website, and blacklist your IPs immediately. A better idea is to time your requests properly one after the other, giving it some human behavior. Oh!.. but scraping like that will take you ages. So balance requests using the average response time of the websites, and play around with the number of parallel requests to the website to get the right number.

3. Store the URLs that you have already fetched

You may want to keep a list of URLs you have already fetched, in a database or a key value store. What would you do if you scraper crashes after scraping 70% of the website. If you need to complete the remaining 30%, with out this list of URLs, you’ll waste a lot of time and bandwidth. Make sure you store this list of URLs

somewhere permanent, till you have all the required data. This could also be combined with the cache. This way, you’ll be able to resume scraping.

4. Split scraping into different phases

Its easier and safer if you split the scraping into multiple smaller phases. For example, you could split scraping a huge site into two. One for gathering links to the pages from which you need to extract data and another for downloading these pages to scrape content.

5. Take only whats required

Don’t grab or follow every link unless its required. You can define a proper navigation scheme to make the scraper visit only the pages required. Its always tempting to grab everything, but its just a waste of bandwidth, time and storage.

Source: http://learn.scrapehero.com/5-tips-for-scraping-big-websites/

How Web Data Extraction Services Impact Startups

Starting a business has its fair share of ebbs and flows – it can be extremely challenging to get a new business off the blocks, and extremely rewarding when everything goes according to plan and yields desired results. For startups, it is important to get the nuances of running a business right from day one. To succeed in an immensely competitive space, startups need to perform above and beyond expectation right from the start, and one of the factors that can be of great help during the growing years of a startup is web data extraction.

Web data extraction through crawling and scraping, a highly efficient information gathering process, can be used in many creative ways to bring about major change in the performance graph of a startup. With effective web data extraction services acquired by outsourcing to a reputed company, the business intelligence gathered and the numerous possibilities associated with it, web crawling and extraction services can indeed become the difference maker for a startup, propelling it to the heights of success.

What drives the success of web data extraction?

When it comes to figuring out the perfect, balanced web data collection methodology for startups, there are a lot of crucial factors that come into play. Some of these are associated with the technical aspects of data collection, the approach used, the time invested, and the tools involved. Others have more to do with the processing and analysis of collected information and its judicious use in formulating strategies to take things forward.

Web Crawling Services & Web Scraping Services

With the advent of highly professional web data extraction services providers, massive amounts of structured, relevant data can be gathered and stored in real time, and in time, productively used to further the business interests of a startup. As a new business owner, it is important to have a high-level knowledge of the modern and highly functional web scraping tools available for use. This will help to utilize the prowess of competent data extraction services. This in turn can assist both in the immediate and long-term revenue generation context.

Web Data Extraction for Startups

From the very beginning, the dynamics of startups is different from that of older, well-established businesses. The time taken by the new business entity in proving its capabilities and market position needs to be used completely and effectively. Every day of growth and learning needs to add up to make a substantial difference. In this period, every plan and strategy, every execution effort, and every move needs to be properly thought out.

In such a trying situation where there is little margin for error, it pays to have accurate, reliable, relevant and actionable business intelligence. This can put you in firm control of things by allowing you to make informed business decisions and formulate targeted, relevant and growth oriented business strategies. With powerful web crawling, the volume of data gathered is varied, accurate and relevant. This data can then be studied minutely, analyzed in detail and arranged into meaningful clusters. With this weapon in your arsenal, you can take your startup a long way with smart decisions and clever implementations.

Web data extraction is a task best handled by professionals who have had rich experience in the field. Often, in-house web scraping teams are difficult to assemble and not economically viable to maintain, especially for startups. For a better solution, you can outsource your web scraping needs to a reliable web data extraction service for data collection. This way, you can get all the relevant intelligence you need without overstraining your workforce or having to employ additional personnel to handle web scraping. The company you outsource your work to can easily scrape data from multiple sources as per your requirements, and furnish you with actionable business intelligence that can help you take a lead in a competitive market.

Different Ways for Startups to use Web Data Extraction

Web scraping can be employed for many different purposes to yield different kinds of relevant data that generate actionable insights. For a startup, the important decision is how to use this powerful technique to provide valuable information that can make a difference for the future prospects of the company. Here are some interesting possibilities when it comes to impactful web data extraction for startups –

Fishing for Social Rankings and Backlinks

One of the most important business processes for a startup is competition analysis. This is one area where web data extraction can come across as an invaluable enabler. In the past, many startups have effectively used web scraping to fish for backlinks and social rankings related to competing companies.

Backlinks are important to reach a greater mass of better-targeted audiences, which can go on to increase customer base with minimal efforts. Social ranking is also an immensely important factor, as social actions on the internet are building blocks of opinion and reputation generation in this day and age. Keeping this in mind, you can use web data extraction to scrape for social rankings and backlinks related to content generated by your competing companies. After careful analysis, it is possible to arrive at concrete conclusions regarding what your competitors are doing well, and what sells the best.

This information is gold for marketers and sales personnel, and can be used to discern exactly what needs to be done to increase social buzz, generate favorable opinion, and win over customers from your competitors. You can also use this technique to develop high authority backlinks that help with SEO, targeted reach and organic traffic for your business website. For competition analysis, web scraping is a formidable tool.

Sourcing Contact Information

Another important aspect of business that startups can never ignore is good networking. Whether it is with customers, prospective customers, industry peers, partners, or competitors, excellent networking and open, transparent communication is essential for the success of your startup. For effective communication and networking, you need a large, solid list of contact information pertaining to your exact requirements.

Scraping data from multiple web sources gives you the perfect method of achieving this. With automated, fast web scraping, you can in a short time collect a wealth of important contact information that can be leveraged in many different ways. Whether it is the formation of lasting business relationships or making potential customers aware of what you have on offer, this information has the power to propel your startup to new levels of recognition.

For Ecommerce

If you sell your products and services online and want to stay on top of the competition when it comes to variety, pricing analysis, and special deals and offers, web scraping is the way to go. For many e-commerce startups, the problem of high CTR and low conversion is a stumbling block to higher bottom lines. To remedy problems like these and to ensure better sales, it is always a good idea to have a clear insight about your competition.

Future of Retail Industry

With web data extraction, you can be always aware of what competing companies are doing in terms of pricing strategies, product diversity and special customer offers. By considering that information while evaluating and cementing your own strategies, you can always ensure that you provide better value and range of products and services than your competitors, and therefore stay ahead of the competition.

For Marketing, Brand Promotion and Advertisement

For startups, the first wave of promotion and marketing is the one that holds the key to your long-term business success. It is during this phase that the first and most important public perception of your company is formed, and the rudiments of public opinion start taking shape. For this reason, it is crucial to be on point with your marketing and promotion during the early, formative years of your business.

To achieve this, you need a clear, in-depth understanding of your target audience. You need to categorize your target audience on the basis of many factors like age, gender, demographics, income groups and tastes and preferences. Such detailed understanding can only be possible when you have a large wealth of social data pertaining to your target audience. There is no better way of achieving this than by web data extraction.

Love your brand

With the help of data extraction services, you can gather large chunks of relevant data regarding your target audience which can help you accurately evaluate the potential of each prospective customers as a possible addition to your business family. To ensure that you have a steady, early wave of customers to take your business off the blocks at a rapid pace, you need to devise marketing campaigns, promotional strategies and advertisements in accordance with the customer knowledge you drive through your web scraping efforts. This is a foolproof strategy to have marketing and promotional plans in place that achieve goals, bring in new business and provide your company with enough initial momentum to carry it through the later years of success.

To conclude, web data extraction can be a veritable tool in the hands of a startup. With the proper use and leveraging of this technique, your startup can gather the required business intelligence to shine in a competitive market and become a favorite with the customer base. Working with the right web data extraction company can be one of the most important business decisions you make as a startup owner.

Source: https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/web-data-extraction-services-for-startups/

Metadata Scraping Service

As mentioned in Robert's last blog post we set up a scraping service which supports users working with citations by extracting automatically references from digital library or publisher websites. We use a very similar service in BibSonomy to support our users while posting a new reference. However, the service is independent from BibSonomy. Our main goal is to make the metadata of other websites easily accessible to every user who needs bibliographic metadata. Therefore we offer the extracted information in BibTeX format. Most tools allow to import BibTeX so it should be very easy for everyone to get the data into his own tool. The service is running under the following URL:

http://scraper.bibsonomy.org/

Currently we support more than 60 different websites (here the full list) and we are working on further extensions. In the near future we will make the source code of our scrapers publicly available under GPL and we hope that other people will find it useful and start to help us by implementing their own scrapers.

How does the service work?

In principle there are two ways to use the service. One uses a so

called bookmarklet and the other is simply based on the URL. If you

have a webpage of a supported site e.g. from ACM digital library the

following page:

Logsonomy - social information retrieval with logdata

then you can copy this URL into the form on the service homepage and the service will return you the extracted BibTeX information. As this is not a very convenient way to access the data we provide a ScrapePublication button. This button is a small piece of JavaScript and can be copied to the toolbar of the browser. By pressing this button while visiting a digital library webpage the URL will be automatically copied and sent to the scraping service and the metadata is extracted.

The service has three options which can be used to customize it and to make it useful for other systems. Obviously one parameter is the URL itself which is used by the bookmarklet, too. The next is the selection parameter which allows to send text to the service and the last parameter allows to change the output format from html to plain BibTeX. This last parameter makes integration with other systems very simple.

If needed we can provide the metadata in other formats as well but currently we support only BibTeX.

Source: http://blog.bibsonomy.org/2008/11/metadata-scraping-service.html

4 Web Scraping Tools To Save You Time On Data Extraction

Either you are working on a product website, struggling to add live data feed to your app or merely need to pull out a huge amount of online data for analysis, an accurate web scraping tool can save you loads of time and keep you sane. Here are four powerful web scraping tools to save you from copy-pasting or spending time on writing your own scripts.

1. Uipath

Either you are working on a product website, struggling to add live data feed to your app or merely need to pull out a huge amount of online data for analysis, an accurate web scraping tool can save you loads of time and keep you sane. Here are four powerful web scraping tools to save you from copy-pasting or spending time on writing your own scripts.

1. Uipath

Uipath specializes in developing various process automation software including web scraping and screen scraping software for desktop and web. Uipath web scraper is perfect for non-coders and easily surpasses most common data extraction challenges including page navigation, digging through flash and even scraping PDF files. All you need to do is open the web scraping wizard and simply highlight the data you need to extract. The tool will scrape all the data following this pattern at all pages you’ve chosen and sort it accordingly. You can add as many items for scraping as you like and have them sorted in respective columns. As a result, you receive a neat Excel or CSV document with all the data eliminated from duplicates.

Moreover, Uipath isn’t just about scraping. This software can be used not only for extracting data, but to manipulate the interface of another app, thus establishing data transfers among the two of them. Basically, this tool could be used to conduct any repetitive task a human could do, yet much faster and with higher accuracy.

Pros: You can automate form filling, clicking buttons, navigation etc. Uipath scraper is impressively accurate, fast and simple to use. It “reads” all types of data on screen (JS, HTML, Silverlight and more), plus you can train the software to emulate human actions of various complexity.

Cons: Premium software runs at a premium price. Uipath is an affordable professional solution, but may be a bit too pricey for personal use.

2. Import.io

Data Extraction

Either you are working on a product website, struggling to add live data feed to your app or merely need to pull out a huge amount of online data for analysis, an accurate web scraping tool can save you loads of time and keep you sane. Here are four powerful web scraping tools to save you from copy-pasting or spending time on writing your own scripts.

1. Uipath

Uipath specializes in developing various process automation software including web scraping and screen scraping software for desktop and web. Uipath web scraper is perfect for non-coders and easily surpasses most common data extraction challenges including page navigation, digging through flash and even scraping PDF files. All you need to do is open the web scraping wizard and simply highlight the data you need to extract. The tool will scrape all the data following this pattern at all pages you’ve chosen and sort it accordingly. You can add as many items for scraping as you like and have them sorted in respective columns. As a result, you receive a neat Excel or CSV document with all the data eliminated from duplicates.

Moreover, Uipath isn’t just about scraping. This software can be used not only for extracting data, but to manipulate the interface of another app, thus establishing data transfers among the two of them. Basically, this tool could be used to conduct any repetitive task a human could do, yet much faster and with higher accuracy.

Pros: You can automate form filling, clicking buttons, navigation etc. Uipath scraper is impressively accurate, fast and simple to use. It “reads” all types of data on screen (JS, HTML, Silverlight and more), plus you can train the software to emulate human actions of various complexity.

Cons: Premium software runs at a premium price. Uipath is an affordable professional solution, but may be a bit too pricey for personal use.

2. Import.io

Import.io offers you a free desktop app to help you scrap all the data you need from an unlimited amount of web pages. The service treats each page as a potential data source to generate API from. If the page you’ve submitted has been previously processed, you can access its API and get some of the data. In other case, Import.io will guide you through the process of creating the scraping matrix by building connectors (for navigation) or extractors (to pull out the needed data). Afterwards, you submit a request for extraction and it’s typically processed within 24 hours. All the data is private and you can schedule auto refreshments at any chosen period of time.

Pros: The service is easy-to-use with no tech skills needed. It can  pages with data (those that needed login/pass), plus it’s free. Minimalistic effective design and simple navigation comes along.

Cons: Improt.io has hard times navigating through combinations of javascript/POST and cannot navigate from one page to another (e.g. click next, second page etc).  Sometimes, it takes over 24 hours to receive the report.  Besides, it’s a browser-only app, non-compatible with other applications.

3. Kimono

Either you are working on a product website, struggling to add live data feed to your app or merely need to pull out a huge amount of online data for analysis, an accurate web scraping tool can save you loads of time and keep you sane. Here are four powerful web scraping tools to save you from copy-pasting or spending time on writing your own scripts.

1. Uipath

Uipath specializes in developing various process automation software including web scraping and screen scraping software for desktop and web. Uipath web scraper is perfect for non-coders and easily surpasses most common data extraction challenges including page navigation, digging through flash and even scraping PDF files. All you need to do is open the web scraping wizard and simply highlight the data you need to extract. The tool will scrape all the data following this pattern at all pages you’ve chosen and sort it accordingly. You can add as many items for scraping as you like and have them sorted in respective columns. As a result, you receive a neat Excel or CSV document with all the data eliminated from duplicates.

Moreover, Uipath isn’t just about scraping. This software can be used not only for extracting data, but to manipulate the interface of another app, thus establishing data transfers among the two of them. Basically, this tool could be used to conduct any repetitive task a human could do, yet much faster and with higher accuracy.

Pros: You can automate form filling, clicking buttons, navigation etc. Uipath scraper is impressively accurate, fast and simple to use. It “reads” all types of data on screen (JS, HTML, Silverlight and more), plus you can train the software to emulate human actions of various complexity.

Cons: Premium software runs at a premium price. Uipath is an affordable professional solution, but may be a bit too pricey for personal use.

2. Import.io

Import.io offers you a free desktop app to help you scrap all the data you need from an unlimited amount of web pages. The service treats each page as a potential data source to generate API from. If the page you’ve submitted has been previously processed, you can access its API and get some of the data. In other case, Import.io will guide you through the process of creating the scraping matrix by building connectors (for navigation) or extractors (to pull out the needed data). Afterwards, you submit a request for extraction and it’s typically processed within 24 hours. All the data is private and you can schedule auto refreshments at any chosen period of time.

Pros: The service is easy-to-use with no tech skills needed. It can  pages with data (those that needed login/pass), plus it’s free. Minimalistic effective design and simple navigation comes along.

Cons: Improt.io has hard times navigating through combinations of javascript/POST and cannot navigate from one page to another (e.g. click next, second page etc).  Sometimes, it takes over 24 hours to receive the report.  Besides, it’s a browser-only app, non-compatible with other applications.

3. Kimono

Kimono is a popular web scraper among app developers who prefer to power up their products with live data and no additional code. It saves you tons of time when you need to fill up your app with mashing data. Install Kimono Browser bookmarklet; highlight page elements you need to and provide some positive/negative examples to train the tool. After labeling all the data you can download it in CSV/JSON/a web endpoint format. The APIs created for your pages are stored in the cloud and you can run them on schedule. So far, Kimono is free to use with pro and enterprise solutions to be launched soon.

Pros: The tool works pretty fast and works great with scraping newsfeeds and prices. The data is rather accurate.

Cons: No page navigation available and you need to spend quite a lot of time to train Kimono before it starts to pull out the multi items data accurate enough. In general, I’d say Kimono is more of an app mash-ups creator than a full-scale web scraper.

4. Screen Scraper

Either you are working on a product website, struggling to add live data feed to your app or merely need to pull out a huge amount of online data for analysis, an accurate web scraping tool can save you loads of time and keep you sane. Here are four powerful web scraping tools to save you from copy-pasting or spending time on writing your own scripts.

1. Uipath

Uipath specializes in developing various process automation software including web scraping and screen scraping software for desktop and web. Uipath web scraper is perfect for non-coders and easily surpasses most common data extraction challenges including page navigation, digging through flash and even scraping PDF files. All you need to do is open the web scraping wizard and simply highlight the data you need to extract. The tool will scrape all the data following this pattern at all pages you’ve chosen and sort it accordingly. You can add as many items for scraping as you like and have them sorted in respective columns. As a result, you receive a neat Excel or CSV document with all the data eliminated from duplicates.

Moreover, Uipath isn’t just about scraping. This software can be used not only for extracting data, but to manipulate the interface of another app, thus establishing data transfers among the two of them. Basically, this tool could be used to conduct any repetitive task a human could do, yet much faster and with higher accuracy.

Pros: You can automate form filling, clicking buttons, navigation etc. Uipath scraper is impressively accurate, fast and simple to use. It “reads” all types of data on screen (JS, HTML, Silverlight and more), plus you can train the software to emulate human actions of various complexity.

Cons: Premium software runs at a premium price. Uipath is an affordable professional solution, but may be a bit too pricey for personal use.

2. Import.io

Import.io offers you a free desktop app to help you scrap all the data you need from an unlimited amount of web pages. The service treats each page as a potential data source to generate API from. If the page you’ve submitted has been previously processed, you can access its API and get some of the data. In other case, Import.io will guide you through the process of creating the scraping matrix by building connectors (for navigation) or extractors (to pull out the needed data). Afterwards, you submit a request for extraction and it’s typically processed within 24 hours. All the data is private and you can schedule auto refreshments at any chosen period of time.

Pros: The service is easy-to-use with no tech skills needed. It can  pages with data (those that needed login/pass), plus it’s free. Minimalistic effective design and simple navigation comes along.

Cons: Improt.io has hard times navigating through combinations of javascript/POST and cannot navigate from one page to another (e.g. click next, second page etc).  Sometimes, it takes over 24 hours to receive the report.  Besides, it’s a browser-only app, non-compatible with other applications.

3. Kimono

Kimono is a popular web scraper among app developers who prefer to power up their products with live data and no additional code. It saves you tons of time when you need to fill up your app with mashing data. Install Kimono Browser bookmarklet; highlight page elements you need to and provide some positive/negative examples to train the tool. After labeling all the data you can download it in CSV/JSON/a web endpoint format. The APIs created for your pages are stored in the cloud and you can run them on schedule. So far, Kimono is free to use with pro and enterprise solutions to be launched soon.

Pros: The tool works pretty fast and works great with scraping newsfeeds and prices. The data is rather accurate.

Cons: No page navigation available and you need to spend quite a lot of time to train Kimono before it starts to pull out the multi items data accurate enough. In general, I’d say Kimono is more of an app mash-ups creator than a full-scale web scraper.

4. Screen Scraper

Screen scraper is pretty neat and tackles a lot of difficult tasks including navigation and precise data extractions, however it requires a bit of programming/tokenization skills if you’d like to run it super smooth. Launch the software, add a proxy, start recording the list of your actions and creating extracting patterns (some coding required). Works great with HTML and Javascript, however you should test it with Citrix and other platforms. Basically, screen scraper helps you writing simple web scraping scripts and lets you download the extracted data in txt/csv/excel format.

Pros: When set correctly, there’s no data extraction tasks Screen scraper fails to handle.

Cons: The tool is pricey and you’ll have to go through documentation and have basic coding skills to use it.

Source: http://tech.co/4-web-scraping-tools-save-time-data-extraction-2015-03

Earn Money From Price Comparison Through Web Scraping

Many individuals discover the pot of gold just within their reach. They have realized that there is money in the web. Cyber technology has blessed mankind with so many benefits that makes money very possible by just some clicks on the mouse and keyboard. Building a price comparison website is an effective way of helping clients find their desired products while you as the owner earn money at the same time.

Building price comparison websites

There is indeed much money in building price comparison websites but it is not an easy task especially for a novice in maintaining a website of one’s own. Since this entails some serious programming and ample familiarity with data feeds, you have to have a good working plan. In addition, what you are venturing into is greater than the usual blogs about just anything that you can think of. Furthermore, you are stepping into the vast field of electronic marketing, therefore you must be ready.

The first point of consideration is to identify which products or services are you going to include in your website. Choose a product or service that you and a majority of clients are mostly interested in. Suppose you want you to choose sports as your theme then you can include items and prices of sports gear, clothing such as uniforms, training videos, books, and other safety stuff. You need to do some research and even a survey to determine whether the goods and services you are promoting on your website are in demand and are what most people want to know. Moreover, it is on this stage that you may need the help of experts and veterans in the field of building to be assured that you are on the right track.

In addition, be willing to change in case your chosen category is not gaining readership or visitors. Then evaluate whether you need to expand or to be more specific in your description of the products and the comparison of the prices. Make your site prominent by search engine optimization (SEO) and make sure to acknowledge also that not too many people visit a site that is not free.

Helping visitors choose the best product/services

Good marketing strategy starts with knowing who your target audience are. There is indeed a need to do a lot of planning and research in order to understand your client’s needs and preferences. Moreover, knowing them thoroughly leads to achieving 100% consumer satisfaction. When you have provided everything they need to know about certain products, they would not need to seek elsewhere which will also gain you more regular visitors. Remember that your audience are members of communities and social networks such that there is a great possibility that they would spread the word around about the good services you are offering.

If there is a need to conduct a survey in addition to research, you should resort to it. In this manner you can discover what goods and services are not yet completely exhausted by the other websites or web creators. Ample knowledge about your potential visitors and consumers will surely make you effectively provide them with adequate statistics for their needs.

Your site will then look like a complete guidebook for them that will give them the best value for their money. Therefore, it must be thoroughly filled with product details, uses, options, and prices.

Making money as affiliate of eCommerce websites

Maintaining a price comparison website gives you less worry about getting paid or having your products bought and sold because income comes in through advertising and affiliate sales. Affiliate marketing is a way of earning money online by serving as a publisher for promotion of products, services or sites of businesses. The affiliate receives rewards from businesses for each visitor or client that comes to the business website or buys its product through the efforts of the advertising and promotion that is made by the affiliate. This is the online version of the concept of agent or referral fee sales channel. Aside from website owners, bloggers as well as members of community forums can also serve as affiliates. The affiliate earns money in three ways: through pay per link; pay per sale and pay per lead.

Trust in the reliability of the product - You should have a personal belief or confidence in the product you are promoting not only because it makes you sound more convincing, but also because you need to maintain your clients and establish credibility in your blog or website. In other words, don’t just pick any product. If you cannot use them personally, they should at least have several positive reviews and no negative ones.

Maintain credibility with readers and fellow bloggers - Befriend your readers and your co-bloggers by answering their queries sincerely and quickly. Your friendly attitude can win you their trust which is a very vital element of affiliate marketing.

Do reviews - In addition to publishing price comparison, you can gain more visitors by writing about the product and do proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization). So the expected happens, the more prominent the product becomes online, the higher will be your income.

Link with friends thru social media - Your friends have friends and their friends have also friends. Just think of how powerful your social media site can be when you post your link on your account on Facebook, Twitter or MySpace and others. Since trust is built on friendship, it is easy to get clients from among your friends and their friends.

Overall, you get all pertinent information about certain products through web data mining or web scraping. All you need to do is to be keen to the needs of your clients and use web content extraction efficiently.

Source: http://www.loginworks.com/earn-money-price-comparison-web-scraping/

Scraping a website from a windows service

Question

Hi there.  I have a windows forms application that scrapes a website to retrieve some data.  I would like to implement the same functionality as a windows service.  The reason for this is to allow the program to run 24/7 without  having a user signed in. 

To that end, my current version of the program uses a web browser control (system.windows.forms.webbrowser) to navigate the pages, click the buttons, allow scripts to do their thing, etc.  I cannot figure out a way to do the same without the web browser control, but the web browser control cannot be instantiated in a windows service (because there is no user interface in a web service).

Does anyone have any brilliant ideas on how to get around this?

Thank you very much!

Answers

Hi Andy,

There is a tool which could let you manipulate anything you want on the website. This agile HTML parser builds a read/write DOM and supports plain XPATH or XSLT. It is a .NET code library that allows you to parse "out of the web" HTML files. The parser is very tolerant with "real world" malformed HTML. The object model is very similar to what proposes System.Xml, but for HTML documents (or streams). More information, please check:

http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/

Have a nice day.

Best regards

All replies

You are not telling if you are using a .NET Express edition or not

You are not telling which Framework

You are not realy saying what data you are getting from the web site.

So

I made an example of service that work on any Studio edition (including the Express)

to install it, I supposed that you have at least the Framework2, so you will use something similar to:

    %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\installutil /i C:\Test\MyWindowService\MyWindowService\bin\Release\MyWindowService.exe

In the example, I supposed that you are downloading some file from the site

You will need a reference to Windows.Form for the timer


Imports System.ServiceProcess

Imports System.Configuration.Install

Public Class WindowsService : Inherits ServiceBase

  Private Minute As Integer = 60000

  Private WithEvents Timer As New Timer With {.Interval = 30 * Minute, .Enabled = True}

  Public Sub New()

    Me.ServiceName = "MyService"

    Me.EventLog.Log = "Application"

    Me.CanHandlePowerEvent = True

    Me.CanHandleSessionChangeEvent = True

    Me.CanPauseAndContinue = True

    Me.CanShutdown = True

    Me.CanStop = True

  End Sub


  Private Sub Timer_Tick(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Timer.Tick

    If IO.File.Exists("C:\MyPath.Data") Then IO.File.Delete("C:\MyPath.Data")

    My.Computer.Network.DownloadFile("http://MyURL.com", "C:\MyPath.Data", "MyUserName", "MyPassword")

    'Do Something with the data downloaded

  End Sub

End Class

<Microsoft.VisualBasic.HideModuleName()> _

Module MainModule

  Public TheServiceName As String

  Public Sub main()

    Dim TheServiceApplication As New WindowsService

    TheServiceName = TheServiceApplication.ServiceName

    ServiceBase.Run(TheServiceApplication)

  End Sub

End Module

<System.ComponentModel.RunInstaller(True)> _

Public Class WindowsServiceInstaller : Inherits Installer

  Public Sub New()

    Dim serviceProcessInstaller As ServiceProcessInstaller = New ServiceProcessInstaller()

    Dim serviceInstaller As ServiceInstaller = New ServiceInstaller()

    serviceProcessInstaller.Account = ServiceAccount.LocalSystem

    serviceProcessInstaller.Username = Nothing

    serviceProcessInstaller.Password = Nothing

    serviceInstaller.DisplayName = "My Windows Service"

    serviceInstaller.StartType = ServiceStartMode.Automatic

    serviceInstaller.ServiceName = TheServiceName

    Me.Installers.Add(serviceProcessInstaller)

    Me.Installers.Add(serviceInstaller)

  End Sub

End Class



 Hello Andy,

Thanks for your post.

What do you want to scrape from the page? HttpWebRequest class ans WebClient class may be what you need. More information, please check:

The HttpWebRequest class provides support for the properties and methods defined in WebRequest and for additional properties and methods that enable the user to interact directly with servers using HTTP.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.httpwebrequest.aspx

The WebClient class provides common methods for sending data to or receiving data from any local, intranet, or Internet resource identified by a URI

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.webclient.aspx

If you have any concenrs, please feel free to follow up.

Best regards



Hi Andy,

What about this problem on your side now? If you have any concerns, please feel free to follow up.

Have a nice day.

Best regards



Hi Andy,

When you come back, if you need further assistance about this issue, please feel free to let us know. We will continue to work with this issue.

Have a nice day.

Best regards



Thank you for the reply. Sorry it has taken me so long to respond.  I did not receive any notification that someone had replied!

I am using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition and the .NET framework 4.0.  Actually, I am upgrading some old code written in VB 6.0, but I can use the latest and greatest thats available.

The application uses a browser control to go to the page, fill in values, click on UI elements, read the HTML that returns, etc.  The purpose of the application is to collection useful information regularily/automatically.

I know how to create a web service, but using the web control in such a service is problematic because the web browser control was meant to be placed on a windows form.  I am not able to create a new instance of it in a project designated as a windows service.



Andy

Thank you for the reply. Sorry it has taken me so long to respond.  I did not receive any notification that someone had replied!

I thought a web request was for web services (retrieving information from them).  I am trying to retreive useful information from a website designed for interaction by a human, such as selecting items from lists and clicking buttons.   I currently use a web browser control to programmatically do what a person would do and get the pages back which in turn get parsed.

Andy



Hi Andy,

There is a tool which could let you manipulate anything you want on the website. This agile HTML parser builds a read/write DOM and supports plain XPATH or XSLT. It is a .NET code library that allows you to parse "out of the web" HTML files. The parser is very tolerant with "real world" malformed HTML. The object model is very similar to what proposes System.Xml, but for HTML documents (or streams). More information, please check:

http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/

Have a nice day.

Best regards



Thanks for the suggestion.  I will go to that link and see if it will work.  I will update this post with what I find.

I am writing to check the status of the issue on your side. Would you mind letting us know the result of the suggestions? If you have any concerns, please feel free to follow up.

Have a nice day.



Best regards

Hi Liliane

Thank for the follow up reply.  I don't have an answer as of yet.  Implementing this is going to take time and I haven't been given the go-ahead by my boss to spend the time to pursue it.



Hi Andy,

Never minde. You could have a try when you feel free. If you have any further questions about this issue, please feel free to let us know. We will continue to work with you on this issue.

Have a nice day.

Best regards

Source: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/f5d565b1-236b-43c2-90c7-f5cc3b2c341b/scraping-a-website-from-a-windows-service

SEO No No! Scraping & Splogging – Content Theft!

Until recently, you could as well as might possibly not have acknowledged how you can perform the earlier mentioned. Even so, the following element could be the really cool element.

Several. Get back to ScrapeBox Add-Ons and also down load your ScrapeBox Blog Analyzer add-on. Open it upwards, and transfer the actual .txt record you merely rescued. Struck start.

ScrapeBox goes through almost every back link you merely scraped and look these phones determine if these are your site that will ScrapeBox presently facilitates placing comments in. If it is, that turns environmentally friendly. If it isn’t, that turns reddish. Soon after it really is concluded, it is possible to “clean” the list insurance agencies the idea remove unsupported websites.

Just what you’re destined to be left with is ALL of the sites the competitor has back-links via, and most importantly, they all are capable of being mentioned in employing ScrapeBox!!

Help save that will “clean” listing with a report, import it this list involving websites you wish to touch upon, and then keep to the exact same steps you’d probably typically follow for you to touch upon websites. Inside of Ten mins you’ll have got all the comps website backlinks (which may be blocked by Public relations if you’d just like) along with you’ll be able to reply to every one of them inside a 20 min (because the list most likely won’t end up being Large).

Desire to force this specific even more?? Obviously you are doing, you’re in BHW

Each step is the same as over with the exception of one tiny issue as well as the addition of an extra step.

Instead of just employing a single foot print inside your first bounty (both from SB’s regular gui after which also the back link checker add-on) you’re likely to be using a A lot of open all of them. Here is what you do to consider this particular to a whole new amount.

Initial, you’re going to pick each of the URLs via AOL, Aol, Ask & Search engines using this footprint:

site:domainyourcompetingwith.org

That will go back ALL the at present found web pages in the area. Remove copy Web addresses along with save that will with a .TXT report.

Now, you’re planning to create the subsequent right in front of each of these URLs:

hyperlink:

Right now follow all of the steps while outlined above. Exactly what this may is actually obtain each of the backlinks to every single site of the rivals web site.

Because Google Back link Checker is simply capable of getting the first 1k Web addresses through Aol (while that’s all Google allows you to view) you could have missed out on a decent amount associated with website inbound links if they had been at night 1st 1k final results. Consequently performing the aforementioned further methods ensures that every brand new web site in the website anyone pay attention to backlinks implies a fresh and other pair of a listing of back-links that is possibly 1k back links long.

Now you understand how to locate, filtration along with take your competitors back links, stop looking at and also move and take action!

Source: https://freescrapeboxlist19.wordpress.com/

What are the ethics of web scraping?

Someone recently asked: "Is web scraping an ethical concept?" I believe that web scraping is absolutely an ethical concept. Web scraping (or screen scraping) is a mechanism to have a computer read a website. There is absolutely no technical difference between an automated computer viewing a website and a human-driven computer viewing a website. Furthermore, if done correctly, scraping can provide many benefits to all involved.

There are a bunch of great uses for web scraping. First, services like Instapaper, which allow saving content for reading on the go, use screen scraping to save a copy of the website to your phone. Second, services like Mint.com, an app which tells you where and how you are spending your money, uses screen scraping to access your bank's website (all with your permission). This is useful because banks do not provide many ways for programmers to access your financial data, even if you want them to. By getting access to your data, programmers can provide really interesting visualizations and insight into your spending habits, which can help you save money.

That said, web scraping can veer into unethical territory. This can take the form of reading websites much quicker than a human could, which can cause difficulty for the servers to handle it. This can cause degraded performance in the website. Malicious hackers use this tactic in what’s known as a "Denial of Service" attack.

Another aspect of unethical web scraping comes in what you do with that data. Some people will scrape the contents of a website and post it as their own, in effect stealing this content. This is a big no-no for the same reasons that taking someone else's book and putting your name on it is a bad idea. Intellectual property, copyright and trademark laws still apply on the internet and your legal recourse is much the same. People engaging in web scraping should make every effort to comply with the stated terms of service for a website. Even when in compliance with those terms, you should take special care in ensuring your activity doesn't affect other users of a website.

One of the downsides to screen scraping is it can be a brittle process. Minor changes to the backing website can often leave a scraper completely broken. Herein lies the mechanism for prevention: making changes to the structure of the code of your website can wreak havoc on a screen scraper's ability to extract information. Periodically making changes that are invisible to the user but affect the content of the code being returned is the most effective mechanism to thwart screen scrapers. That said, this is only a set-back. Authors of screen scrapers can always update them and, as there is no technical difference between a computer-backed browser and a human-backed browser, there's no way to 100% prevent access.

Going forward, I expect screen scraping to increase. One of the main reasons for screen scraping is that the underlying website doesn't have a way for programmers to get access to the data they want. As the number of programmers (and the need for programmers) increases over time, so too will the need for data sources. It is unreasonable to expect every company to dedicate the resources to build a programmer-friendly access point. Screen scraping puts the onus of data extraction on the programmer, not the company with the data, which can work out well for all involved.

Source: https://quickleft.com/blog/is-web-scraping-ethical/

How to Generate Sales Leads Using Web Scraping Services

The first stage of any selling process is what is popularly known as “lead generation”. This phase is what most businesses place at the apex of their sales concerns. It is a driving force that governs decision-making at its highest levels, and influences business strategy and planning. If you are about to embark on an outbound sales campaign and are in the process of looking for leads, you would acknowledge the fact that lead generation process is of extreme importance for any business.

Different lead generation techniques have been used over and over again by companies around the world to satiate this growing business need. Newer, more innovative methods have also emerged to help marketers in this process. One such method of lead generation that is fast catching on, and is poised to play a big role for businesses in the coming years, is web scraping. With web scraping, you can easily get access to multiple relevant and highly customized leads – a perfect starting point for any marketing, promotional or sales campaign.

The prominence of Web Scraping in overall marketing strategy

At present, levels of competition have risen sky high for most businesses. For success, lead generation and gaining insight about customer behavior and preferences is an essential business requirement. Web scraping is the process of scraping or mining the internet for information. Different tools and techniques can be used to harvest information from multiple internet sources based on relevance, and the structured and organized in a way that makes sense to your business. Companies that provide web scraping services essentially use web scrapers to generate a targeted lead database that your company can then integrate into its marketing and sales strategies and plans.

The actual process of web scraping involves creating scraping scripts or algorithms which crawl the web for information based on certain preset parameters and options. The scraping process can be customized and tuned towards finding the kind of data that your business needs. The script can extract data from websites automatically, collate and put together a meaningful collection of leads for business development.

Lead Generation Basics

At a very high level, any person who has the resources and the intent to purchase your product or service qualifies as a lead. In the present scenario, you need to go far deeper than that. Marketers need to observe behavior patterns and purchasing trends to ensure that a particular person qualifies as a lead. If you have a group of people you are targeting, you need to decide who the viable leads will be, acquire their contact information and store it in a database for further action.

List buying used to be a popular way to get leads, but their efficacy has dwindled over time. Web scraping is the fast coming up as a feasible lead generation technique, allowing you to find highly focused and targeted leads in short amounts of time. All you need is a service provider that would carry out the data mining necessary for lead generation, and you end up with a list of actionable leads that you can try selling to.

How Web Scraping makes a substantial difference

With web scraping, you can extract valuable predictive information from websites. Web scraping facilitates high quality data collection and allows you to structure marketing and sales campaigns better. To drive sales and maximize revenue, you need strong, viable leads. To facilitate this, you need critical data which encompasses customer behavior, contact details, buying patterns and trends, willingness and ability to spend resources, and a myriad of other aspects critical to ascertain the potential of an entity as a rewarding lead. Data mining through web scraping can be a great way to get to these factors and identifying the leads that would make a difference for your business.

web-scraping-service

Crawling through many different web locales using different techniques, web scraping services pick up a wealth of information. This highly relevant and specialized information instantly provides your business with actionable leads. Furthermore, this exercise allows you to fine-tune your data management processes, make more accurate and reliable predictions and projections, arrive at more effective, strategic and marketing decisions and customize your workflow and business development to better suit the current market.

The Process and the Tools

Lead generation, being one of the most important processes for any business, can prove to be an expensive proposition if not handled strategically. Companies spend large amounts of their resources acquiring viable leads they can sell to. With web scraping, you can dramatically cut down the costs involved in lead generation and take your business forward with speed and efficiency. Here are some of the time-tested web scraping tools which can come in handy for lead generation –

•    Website download software – Used to copy entire websites to local storage. All website pages are downloaded and the hierarchy of navigation and internal links preserve. The stored pages can then be viewed and scoured for information at any later time.     Web scraper – Tools that crawl through bulk information on the internet, extracting specific, relevant data using a set of pre-defined parameters.

•    Data grabber – Sifts through websites and databases fast and extracts all the information, which can be sorted and classified later.

•    Text extractor – Can be used to scrape multiple websites or locations for acquiring text content from websites and web documents. It can mine data from a variety of text file formats and platforms.

With these tools, web scraping services scrape websites for lead generation and provide your business with a set of strong, actionable leads that can make a difference.

Covering all Bases

The strength of web scraping and web crawling lies in the fact that it covers all the necessary bases when it comes to lead generation. Data is harvested, structured, categorized and organized in such a way that businesses can easily use the data provided for their sales leads. As discussed earlier, cold and detached lists no longer provide you with enough actionable leads. You need to look at various factors and consider them during your lead generation efforts –

•    Contact details of the prospect

•    Purchasing power and purchasing history of the prospect

•    Past purchasing trends, willingness to purchase and history of buying preferences of the prospect

•    Social markers that are indicative of behavioral patterns

•    Commercial and business markers that are indicative of behavioral patterns

•    Transactional details

•    Other factors including age, gender, demography, social circles, language and interests

All these factors need to be taken into account and considered in detail if you have to ensure whether a lead is viable and actionable, or not. With web scraping you can get enough data about every single prospect, connect all the data collected with the help of onboarding, and ascertain with conviction whether a particular prospect will be viable for your business.

Let us take a look at how web scraping addresses these different factors –

1. Scraping website’s

During the scraping process, all websites where a particular prospect has some participation are crawled for data. Seemingly disjointed data can be made into a sensible unit by the use of onboarding- linking user activities with their online entities with the help of user IDs. Documents can be scanned for participation. E-commerce portals can be scanned to find comments and ratings a prospect might have delivered to certain products. Service providers’ websites can be scraped to find if the prospect has given a testimonial to any particular service. All these details can then be accumulated into a meaningful data collection that is indicative of the purchasing power and intent of the prospect, along with important data about buying preferences and tastes.

2. Social scraping

According to a study, most internet users spend upwards of two hours every day on social networks. Therefore, scraping social networks is a great way to explore prospects in detail. Initially, you can get important identification markers like names, addresses, contact numbers and email addresses. Further, social networks can also supply information about age, gender, demography and language choices. From this basic starting point, further details can be added by scraping social activity over long periods of time and looking for activities which indicate purchasing preferences, trends and interests. This exercise provides highly relevant and targeted information about prospects can be constructively used while designing sales campaigns.

Check out How to use Twitter data for your business

3. Transaction scraping

Through the scraping of transactions, you get a clear idea about the purchasing power of prospects. If you are looking for certain income groups or leads that invest in certain market sectors or during certain specific periods of time, transaction scraping is the best way to harvest meaningful information. This also helps you with competition analysis and provides you with pointers to fine-tune your marketing and sales strategies.

get-results-from-your-lead-generation-campaign

Using these varied lead generation techniques and finding the right balance and combination is key to securing the right leads for your business. Overall, signing up for web scraping services can be a make or break factor for your business going forward. With a steady supply of valuable leads, you can supercharge your sales, maximize returns and craft the perfect marketing maneuvers to take your business to an altogether new dimension.

Source: https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/how-to-generate-sales-leads-using-web-scraping-services/

Scraping expert's Amazon Scraper provides huge access to find your desired product on Amazon

Today, with latest advancement of technology we find plenty of ecommerce websites offering huge benefits to people by giving out various products from different categories at an affordable cost. One of the most renowned ecommerce website Amazon has come up with its all new launch of Amazon Scraper for the comfort of their customers. This product Amazon Scraper is also called web harvesting which is a computer software technique for getting out data from websites.

Today anyone can find such web scraping tools that are specifically designed for particular websites. Like for example, Amazon Scraper is also a web scraper tool or technique utilised to crawl, or scrap or even extract the data from the largest e commerce website called Amazon.com. Scrapingexpert.com offers best Amazon scraper for extracting plenty of products from websites easily.

Amazon scraper

Let us see how the Amazon Scraper works:

How to use: Step 1) Select the Category; Enter the (Keyword, UPC, and ASIN) Step 2) Set the delay in seconds Step 3) Click Start

Also you can Scrape the below given details from Amazon.com:

•     Product Title & Description
•     Category & Cost Manufacture,
•     QTY Seller Name,
•     Total Sellers Shipping Cost,
•     Shipping / Product Weight ImageURL, IsBuyBoxFBA, Source Link
•     Stars, Customer Reviews
•     ASIN, UPC, Model Number Sales Rank,
•     Sales Rank In Category

Here are some interesting Product Features:

•     Single Screen Dashboard that shows total extracted records, extracted keywords, and elapse.
•     Filter Search - Skip data that do not match phrases or keywords
•     Compatible for Microsoft XP/Vista/Windows 7
•     Option to set delay between requests to simulate a human surfing in a browser
•     Extracted data is stored in CSV format, which you can easily open in excel

Benefits:

•     Less Expensive - With our valuable services, we allow you to save both your efforts and money. We have some competitors who outsource their scraping projects to us.
•     Guaranteed Accurate Results - We assure you get most reliable solutions with accurate results that cannot be collected by any ordinary human being or anyone else.
•     Delivers Fast Results - We promise to get your work done in just few hours, which can take plenty of time if done by someone else. We save your time, workforce and money and give you an opportunity to stand at a distinction over your multiple competitors.
•     System Requirement: Operating System - Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 Net Framework 2.0

Are you searching for some cost effective programs to extract data of other users? If your answer is yes, then we offer Amazon Screen Scraping which is the best Amazon Screen Scraping method of data extraction. Today, in this competitive world of advanced technology there are multiple companies who claim to offer best Amazon Screen Scraping services, so hiring their services for Amazon Screen Scraping can allow you to scrap almost any data in any format you wish to obtain. Well, we at Scrapingexpert.com study each and every single bit of little details of the scraping project and then provide you with a free quote and the date of completing the work

In order to get accurate data pertaining to a specific product, you can use our Awesome Amazon Scraper Tool. This Awesome Amazon Scraping Tool is very effective tool that will help you to extract information about any product from Amazon.

Websitedatascraping.com is enough capable to web data scraping, website data scraping, web scraping services, website scraping services, data scraping services, product information scraping and yellowpages data scraping.

Data Mining Process - Why Outsource Data Mining Service?

Overview of Data Mining and Process:

Data mining is one of the unique techniques for investigating information to extract certain data patterns and decide to outcome of existing requirements. Data mining is widely use in client research, services analysis, market research and so on. It is totally based on mathematical algorithm and analytical skills to drive the desired results from the huge database collection.

Information mining is mostly used by financial analyzer, business and professional organization and also there are many growing area of business that are get maximum advantages of data extract with use of data warehouses in their small to large level of businesses.

Most of functionalities which are used in information collecting process define as under:

* Retrieving Data
* Analyzing Data
* Extracting Data
* Transforming Data
* Loading Data
* Managing Databases

Most of small, medium and large levels of businesses are collect huge amount of data or information for analysis and research to develop business. Such kind of large amount will help and makes it much important whenever information or data required.

Why Outsource Data Online Mining Service?

Outsourcing advantages of data mining services:

o Almost save 60% operating cost

o High quality analysis processes ensuring accuracy levels of almost 99.98%

o Guaranteed risk free outsourcing experience ensured by inflexible information security policies and practices

o Get your project done within a quick turnaround time

o You can measure highly skilled and expertise by taking benefits of Free Trial Program.

o Get the gathered information presented in a simple and easy to access format

Thus, data or information mining is very important part of the web research services and it is most useful process. By outsource data extraction and mining service; you can concentrate on your co relative business and growing fast as you desire.

Outsourcing web research is trusted and well known Internet Market research organization having years of experience in BPO (business process outsourcing) field.

If you want to more information about data mining services and related web research services, then contact us.

Outsourcing Web Research has best infrastructure includes 200+ workstations supported by advanced technologies for operational efficiency and optimum security of your data and information.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-Process---Why-Outsource-Data-Mining-Service?&id=3789102

Safeguarding the Future Through Data Mining

Web scraping can be a powerful tool not only in business and research. In fact, it has the capacity to protect the future by its predicting power. You may find this declaration incredible; but data mining is indeed a tangible way of predicting future events and thus protecting life in the future.

With the thousands of years of existence on earth, humans are able to gather as much information and experience to have a glimpse of what is to come. With the cycles of changes in the environment and in the whole universe aside from the human behavior, so much can be learned and applied.

At least three major things can be determined by careful and diligent data mining. These are: future threats; future trends; and future tactics.

Future threats

According to reports, the US intelligence agencies have been using web extraction as a way of studying the present and past terrorism acts and personages to predict future terrorist events. This has been actively done since the year 2010.

Data is gathered about a known terrorist such as: his activities; his contacts; his routines; the places he frequents; and other related information. These data are analyzed and classified. Any suspicious activities as well as unusual contact are monitored closely. Through these stored data and monitoring processes, any untoward activities can be precluded and preempted. You may say that terrorists can be using data mining too; and that is obviously possible. In this way, web scraping can also be used as a weapon for destruction. There is then a need for the government agencies to be very careful in protecting their data so that the enemies cannot retrieve them.

In the overall picture, you can just imagine how many lives, trauma, and damage can be prevented if future terrorist activities are prevented.

Moreover, climate change is another phenomenon that has already been predicted and is beginning to occur nowadays. Scientists have been studying the effects of global warming and environmental degradation through online data too. So much information drives and warning have been published by scholarly papers and by the experts but many of these have remained unheeded. Now that erratic weather conditions are happening, people can only regret and feel guilty that they are part of the cause of the problem.

However, it is not really too late to do some actions. People can avoid places where abnormal conditions are expected to happen; they can do some measures to protect themselves; and they can be informed ahead of time before anything catastrophic could happen.

Future trends

In relation to the predictions of possible threats, data extraction can also predict future trends. This is most helpful in businesses because they can be helped to produce items and employ strategies that will suit the expected patrons and clients.  Since history tends to repeat itself, data gathered in the past and present if studied judiciously and compared intelligently can bring in positive results.

Oftentimes, the companies that study their books as well as of those who have gone before them can gain more knowledge and expertise that will surely put them ahead of their contemporaries.

Future tactics

Naturally, along with knowing the possible events and trends in the future, strategies and ways to combat threats and cope with trends can also be predicted through web scraping.

Safeguarding the future is no longer a dream or wish. As early as today, experts can create equipment, structures, strategies, and even weapons to prevent any untoward incidents and collateral damage.

Studying the strengths and weaknesses of the past and present plans, procedures, and tools can lead to better technologies and techniques. The future can be a better and safer place if people can learn from the mistakes of the past and go from good to better.

The statement: “The best is yet to come,” will finally be realized if proper management of data and information collected and analyzed through web scraping will be conducted.

Bright future
Looking at the horizon, one can always expect the sun to shine and bring in a bright day. This same positive expectation for the future is indeed possible. Thanks to data mining; life can be handled more securely and precisely.

It does not mean that humans have become gods. It only proves that a person’s talents and skills, when used properly can make his/her future brighter and more successful. On the other hand, carelessness and lack of sensibilities to other people and the environment can surely bring in future doom.

Everything is laid bare and you are given the chance to handle the present with enough wisdom and capabilities. Although the world is too big to be understood and there is still a huge field of knowledge to be conquered, life can surely go on positively.

Source:http://www.loginworks.com/blogs/web-scraping-blogs/257-safeguarding-the-future-through-data-mining/

About Web Scraping and Web Data Mining

Web scraping as suggested by the name simply refers to method of obtaining data or information from an array of websites. This has greatly revolutionized how companies obtain data and put this obtained data into significant use.This has greatly helped many firms and individuals in different spheres transact in the most effective ways. With the internet offering a very large base for obtaining information, various companies have resorted to use web scraping as method of getting information. Relevance of needed data is of great importance since it is the determining factor of what and how data has to be scraped. A good number of data mining companies have come up to help individuals and organizations get the information as per their requirements. These companies also provide software which when installed in a computer may be of great importance to the business.

Depending on the organizations background it may opt to choose between mining the data for themselves or actually employing the services of a data mining company. These organizations have data mining experts who actually are better suited to handle data professionally. As it sounds it is not every ones job since it is computer languages that are used therefore it is only those with relevant knowledge that are well suited to handle this jobs.

Although short cuts are considered dangerous, in this case hiring the services of this experts may bring with it better results with minimized costs than doing the job internally What brings about the idea of a company going for a particular data mining company? For obvious reasons it may because of some eye catching advertisement somewhere. Mostly businesses do extensive research when it comes to making this choice and depending on the gravity sensitivity and format of sort data. These companies provide the needed data in the most comprehensive and in the needed format hence wastage of time as a resource is unheard in these businesses.

web scraping and data mining Research done by these companies ought to be converted to meaningful results. This is done by carrying out meaning full analysis and deducing relevant conclusions from this data. This operation greatly improves the efficiency of these organizations. Analysis done on this is carried by asking relevant questions regarding some aspects regarding the operations of the business. Questions that are frequently asked may take a certain form like, how viable could this be in the short run? In the quest of these answers it is then that meaningful analysis is done.

Data mining companies have given the business word a major boost in the accusation of data from the internet which may now be considered as the largest information resource. It also through this data mining that results from surveys across various parts of the world is acquired. This eliminates the need for this company carrying out these researches for themselves .Of particular importance is the aspect of language barriers making an individual company seeks the services of a reputable data mining firm. Therefore from all the above considerations it can be deduced that, if only a business is to achieve its objectives only proper web scraping techniques from reputable firms should be employed.

Web data mining refers to ways and methods which are used in seeking information from a wide array of websites. Companies and individuals employ this in their daily operations since in the current word lack of information can be a major setback. This is simply because it is through data mining that enterprises will be able to market their businesses, get information regarding upcoming promotions and sometimes make relevant discoveries. This explains why companies are investing lots of resources all aimed in the search of relevant information. After this organizations have gathered this information implementation of obtained information is vital. Therefore data mining should be coupled with relevant implementation to count it as a success. Analysis of information is quite important .Since bulky information obtained may not be necessarily required in that form. This is done using software that is capable of giving a good analysis of the data.

Analysis is done in different ways depending on requirements like one may require a summary or categorized data. Previously when data mining was not greatly used software developments were minimal .Recently there are great improvements in this field since many organizations are embracing it particularly those in third world countries. This has greatly improved turnovers of a good number of companies. Previously many firms used to collect data manually. This of course proved to be a very slow method and a tiring one. Many firms had to increase their staff to cope with this bulk in workload. Considering this age where capitalism is thriving they risked being faced out since it is the case where only the strongest survive and the weaker ones pave way. Time was a factor in realizing an increase in number of organization using this technologically advanced approach. Usage of this collected information is actually used to foster better growth of the company.

Based on previous findings from various analysis techniques are employed by the firms employees irrespective of their ranks. For examples managers may employ web data mining to make good and realistic decisions that are consistent or better than those which other companies are using. Information may also aid in improvement of business infrastructure since in the modern word infrastructure development is on the rise. Better infrastructure acquired on time will actually give the business a big thrust ahead of their competitors. With the relevant data mining software’s companies are able to do meaningful research and developments. For instance companies are able to address issues regarding their customers preferences, their individual wants .

A company may easily know who their customers are, what they are their likes and also their economic abilities. This can be used when the company decides to give offers, discounts and many other customer enticing actions. For example a soft drink company will have to place its promotions during winter since it is then that their customers are unlikely to buy their services. With this great increase in number of resources on the websites no individual can afford to ignore data mining.

Source: http://www.loginworks.com/blogs/web-scraping-blogs/247-web-scraping-and-web-data-mining/