Understanding URL scraping

Understanding URL scraping

URL scraping is the process where you automatically extract and filter URLs of WebPages that have specific features. The features that you are looking for vary depending on your goal. For example, if you are looking for a site where you can place your comment and get back link juice, you should go for WebPages that allow dofollow comments.

Techniques for URL scraping

There are many techniques that you can use to get the URL that you are looking for. Some of these techniques include:

Copy pasting: this is where you visit a given site and check whether it has the features that you are looking for. For example, if you are interested in dofollow links, you should visit a number of sites and find out if they have your target links. You should then identify the ones that have the features that you are looking for and compile a list.

Text grepping: this is a technique that allows you to search plain text on websites that match a regular expression. Although, the technique was designed for Unix, you can also use it on other operating systems.

HTTP programming: here you retrieve the WebPages that have the features that you are looking for. You should then note the URL of the pages. To retrieve the pages you have to post HTTP requests using a remote server that uses socket programming.

HTML Parser: a HTML parser allows you to mine data by detecting a common template, script or code on a specific website or Webpage. To be able to detect the script or code you have to use one of the many programming languages: HTQL, Java, PHP, XQuery and Python. Once the data is extracted, it's translated and packaged in a way that you are able to easily understand it.

DOM parsing: This is a technique where you retrieve dynamic content that has been generated by client side scripts that execute in a web browser such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or any other browsers.

URL scraping software: this is the easiest way of scraping URLs as all you need is high quality software that will do all the work for you. You should identify the features that you are interested in and then give command to the software. The software will go through all the sites on the internet and extract the URLs of the pages that have your target features.

We have plenty of information on CPV and Internet Marketing; therefore, if you are looking for URL Scraper tools for PPV you should highly consider visiting our website.

Source:http://www.amazines.com/article_detail.cfm/6180373?articleid=6180373

15 Web Scraping Services to Extract Online Data

15 Web Scraping Services to Extract Online Data

Web Scraping or Web harvesting is a technique of extracting data from the multiple web pages. It is the process of gathering the information from world wide web. Actually, Web scraping is very tough and time-consuming process if you do not use any automation software. There are many scraping softwares or you can say scraping tools available which can extract your online data easily for your online businesses.

best-web-scraping-services-tools

Here is the list of best web scraping softwares or tools which are accepted by many organizations.

1. Import.io

Import.io is a web data extraction platform that follows the simple process to extract the web data. It builds your own datasets by importing the data from the web page & exporting the data into comma separated file format. As per the experts, Web app development company leaders and industry legends, it is the easiest way to extract your data. Import.io is having a strength to extract the data from the most complex sites. The best thing about Import.io is, without a single line of code, you can scrap a number of web pages easily.

2. Scrape Box

Scrape Box is specially designed for SEO service providing companies and the freelancers. It is the SEO tool that can be used for multipurpose SEO related stuff. It can be used for the multi purposes such as the search engine harvester, comment poster, link checker, keyword & proxy harvester, etc. Scrape Box makes SEO freelancers’ tasks easy as it is like a marketing helper which automatically does many tasks including harvesting URLs, link-building, competitive analysis, executing site audits, etc. Multi-threaded operation, Highly customizable as per your needs, low price, various free add-ons and 24/7 support are the other remarkable features that encourage people for use it.

3. CloudScrape

CloudScrape is the browser based editor or you can say data extraction tool generally used for web scraping, web crawling and big data collection in real time. It gives the facility of saving the collected data on different cloud platforms like Google Drive or Box.net. You can also export your collected data as CSV or JSON. This cloud-scraping service helps in navigation through websites, fill the form, build robots as well as extracting real time data.

4. TheWebMiner

TheWebminer is a popular company that offers high-level web data extraction solutions. It serves web scraping services along with the many more data processing solutions. It is offering automation and consulting services in the era of web data extraction. From one time scraping of the single site to daily reports of multiple competitors, TheWebMiner fulfills your all requirements down to the earth. It also provides data conversion from one format to any other format. It cleans your data by removing duplicates & other irrelevant content. Data analysis in different tiers can also be done by TheWebMiner.

5. 80legs

80legs is a powerful cum flexible web crawling service. Whether you want to use 80legs’ existing scrapers or you want to build your own scrapers, it provides the tool that can help you to scrap the data very speedily. The web scraper claims to over 6 lacs plus domains. Industry leaders like PayPal and MailChimp also use 80legs for web scraping & web crawling. High-performance web crawling with faster speed makes 80legs unique. You can run your own web crawls and/or collect data anywhere from the internet using 80legs.

6. Mozenda

Mozenda is the genuine and advanced data scraping and web data extraction tool recognized by many major brands. It comes with modern cloud-based architecture that offers fast deployment, scalability & easy accessibility. You just need to climb 3 stairs and you are done with your work. At first stair, extract your text, file or images from multiple web pages using Mozenda. At second stair, arrange your data files & export it into popular formats. At last; in the last stair, send your web data to your structured database. Mozenda is the well known because of it’s accuracy that leads to low maintenance.

7. ParseHub

ParseHub is the web browser extension that turns your dynamic websites into APIs. It also converts your poorly structured websites into the APIs without writing a code. It crawls single or multiple websites & also handles JavaScript, AJAX, cookies, redirects, sessions, etc. The user can solve major difficulties in collecting data using ParseHub.

8. Visual Web Ripper

Visual Web Ripper is one stop solution for Automated web scraping, Web harvesting and content extraction from the web. It is one type of web data extraction software that automatically comes to your website and gathers complete content structures. It also comes with some eccentric features like user-friendly visual project editor & repeatedly submit forms for all possible input values.

9. WebHose

WebHose, also known as Webhose.io is a web crawling & data integration software that provides immediate access to real-time & structured data. Continuously crawling thousands of online resources, supports in 240+ languages, covering a wide range of forums, blog platforms & news outlets, fastest integration, a variety of plans and affordable rates are the prominent features of the Webhose.io.

10. Fminer

Fminer is one of the best visual web scraping softwares. It comes with macro recorder and diagram designer. It is pretty easy to use web scraping, web harvesting, web crawling & web micro support software. Other important features are a visual design tool, ability to crawl web 2.0 dynamic websites, options of multiple crawl path navigation, multi-threaded crawling, nested data elements and captcha test, etc.

11. WebSundew

With high productivity & speed, WebSundew rules the world in terms of web scraping & web harvesting. It captures web data with high accuracy as well. It permits users to automate the entire process of extracting and storing the data from websites. It is having a facility of point and click user interface. Data extraction agent is there for given website. WebSundae also provides customer oriented professional support for any kind of query.

12. Content Grabber

Content Grabber is the perfect choice if you want to extract your data by web scraping and web automation. Customer uses this platform to build price comparison portals, market intelligence & monitoring, open source intelligence, content integration and migration, B2B integration or process automation, etc. So, you can also use Content Grabber for a similar type of services.

13. Spinn3r

Want to index blogs, news or social media? Here is the solution. Spinn3r give you the permission to fetch whole data from webblogs, news sites, social media sites, RSS & ATOM feeds, etc. It distributed with a full firehose API which handles 95% of the data indexing requirements. It provides a penetrable admin console. Full-text search, Boilerplate removal, fault tolerance, language and spam detection are the other main features of Spinn3r.

14. WinAutomation

WinAutomation is an automated tool that is specially designed to automate repetitive tasks on your computer. It automatically fills & submits web forms, automatically extracts the data from the web page into text / excel files. WinAutomation automates software robots, automate any desktop application, websites & web applications in such a modern way.

15. Outwit

Outwit is the next generation web harvesting semantic software tool. It is specialized in extracting & organizing online data and media. It will automatically discover a number of webpages or search engine results. Pro version of Outwit provides the facility to navigate from page to page in sequence of results. The tool also lets users extract links, images, email addresses & data tables.

Source:http://www.quertime.com/article/15-web-scraping-services-to-extract-online-data/

Data Mining Basics

Definition and Purpose of Data Mining:

Data mining is a relatively new term that refers to the process by which predictive patterns are extracted from information.
Data is often stored in large, relational databases and the amount of information stored can be substantial. But what does this data mean? How can a company or organization figure out patterns that are critical to its performance and then take action based on these patterns? To manually wade through the information stored in a large database and then figure out what is important to your organization can be next to impossible.This is where data mining techniques come to the rescue! Data mining software analyzes huge quantities of data and then determines predictive patterns by examining relationships.

Data Mining Techniques:

There are numerous data mining (DM) techniques and the type of data being examined strongly influences the type of data mining technique used.Note that the nature of data mining is constantly evolving and new DM techniques are being implemented all the time.Generally speaking, there are several main techniques used by data mining software: clustering, classification, regression and association methods.

Clustering:

Clustering refers to the formation of data clusters that are grouped together by some sort of relationship that identifies that data as being similar. An example of this would be sales data that is clustered into specific markets.

Classification:

Data is grouped together by applying known structure to the data warehouse being examined. This method is great for categorical information and uses one or more algorithms such as decision tree learning, neural networks and "nearest neighbor" methods.

Regression:

Regression utilizes mathematical formulas and is superb for numerical information. It basically looks at the numerical data and then attempts to apply a formula that fits that data.New data can then be plugged into the formula, which results in predictive analysis.

Association:

Often referred to as "association rule learning," this method is popular and entails the discovery of interesting relationships between variables in the data warehouse (where the data is stored for analysis). Once an association "rule" has been established, predictions can then be made and acted upon. An example of this is shopping: if people buy a particular item then there may be a high chance that they also buy another specific item (the store manager could then make sure these items are located near each other).

Data Mining and the Business Intelligence Stack:

Business intelligence refers to the gathering, storing and analyzing of data for the purpose of making intelligent business decisions. Business intelligence is commonly divided into several layers, all of which constitute the business intelligence "stack."
The BI (business intelligence) stack consists of: a data layer, analytics layer and presentation layer.The analytics layer is responsible for data analysis and it is this layer where data mining occurs within the stack. Other elements that are part of the analytics layer are predictive analysis and KPI (key performance indicator) formation.Data mining is a critical part of business intelligence, providing key relationships between groups of data that is then displayed to end users via data visualization (part of the BI stack's presentation layer). Individuals can then quickly view these relationships in a graphical manner and take some sort of action based on the data being displayed.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-Basics&id=5120773

Take Your Online Business to the Next Level with Web Scraping Services

Take Your Online Business to the Next Level with Web Scraping Services

So you've spent long hours developing your online business - going it alone and carving out your niche. You've invested a large part of yourself and your money into developing a good idea and now you're seeing some fruits of your labor. Many business websites today live and die on information and the ability to collect it effectively is what can make all the difference. Whether your business is old or just an idea, there is no wrong time to start gathering data. It will take your business to the next level.

Online startups need help right now

You've got a great idea. You think you can make money with it online. You're prepared to invest time and money to make it happen, but you're not sure if it will work? Web Scraping can help. A web scraping service can search for data relevant to your idea and deliver a concise report on how many other sites are doing the same thing, what they charge, how long they've been doing it, etc. This is an invaluable tool to help you determine what your next step will be and what direction to take.

Going it alone

You've already started your online business. You're on your way toward developing your web presence. How do you buildup your web traffic? Start data mining to find your direction. Many people at this stage choose to go it alone and start web parsing on their own to save on expenses. Unless your super tech savvy, don't waste your time. A professional web scraping service can be set up to extract website data and deliver information to you before you can even figure out how to use that software you just downloaded. That's time you can spend doing other things - like taking a break.

It's working - Now what?

Your site has been up and running for awhile and you are seeing results. You've established a good web presence and your traffic is growing. You're starting to see some returns and you want more. Now what? Start marketing! BUT WAIT! Before you spend more time and money targeting future customers, find out who they are and how to reach them. In this critical step, a web scraping service will make all the difference. It can search out forums and social media websites where consumers post reviews about products and services similar to yours. It can show what they like to use and what they are spending their money on and where they go to do it. It can show you where to target your advertising dollars to maximize your returns.

Good business gets better

You're web presence is established. Customers come back for your product or service frequently and your profits reflect this. You've put in the effort and you've earned your position in the market. You've reached a comfortable level with your online business. Now is the time to take the next step. In order to go from good to better, you need to start really developing information about your competition and how your potential customers are responding to them. What are your competitors doing right? More importantly, what are they doing wrong? You already have your customer base, but why not solidify it and grow it. Data mining at this stage will show you how to improve your products or services. It will show you if your competition is making a mistake and how you can take advantage of it. It will help you tinker with your pricing and customer service to maximize customer loyalty. It will take you to the next level.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Take-Your-Online-Business-to-the-Next-Level&id=6531030

Data Extraction Product vs Web Scraping Service which is best?

Product v/s Service: Which one is the real deal?

With analytics and especially market analytics gaining importance through the years, premier institutions in India have started

offering market analytics as a certified course. Quite obviously, the global business market has a huge appetite for information

analytics and big data.

While there may be a plethora of agents offering data extraction and management services, the industry is struggling to go

beyond superficial and generic data-dump creation services. Enterprises today need more intelligent and insightful information.

The main concern with product-based models would be their incapability to extract and generate flexible and customizable data

in terms of format. This shortcoming can be majorly attributed to the almost-mechanical process of the product- it works only

within the limits and scope of the algorithm.

To place things into perspective, imagine you run an apparel enterprise. You receive two kinds of data files. One contains data

about everything related to fashion- fashion magazines, famous fashion models, make-up brand searches, apparel brands

trending and so on. On the other hand, the data is well segregated into trending apparel searches, apparel competitor strategies,

fashion statements and so on. Which one would you prefer? Obviously, the second one- this is more relevant to you and will

actually make life easier while drawing insights and taking strategic calls.


In the scenario where an enterprise wishes to cut down on overhead expenses and resources to clean the data and process it into

meaningful information, that’s when the heads turn towards service-based web extraction. The service-based model of web

extraction has customization and ready-to-consume data as its key distinction feature.

Web extraction, in process parlance is a service that dives deep into the world of internet and fishes out the most relevant data

and activities. Imagine a junkyard being thoroughly excavated and carefully scraped to find you the exact nuts, bolts and spares

you need to build the best mechanical project. This is metaphorically what web extraction offers as a service.

The entire excavation process is objective and algorithmically driven. The process is carried out with a final motive of extracting

meaningful data and processing it into insightful information. Though the algorithmic process leads to a major drawback of

duplication, unlike a web extractor (product), wweb extraction as a service entails a de-duplication process to ensure that you are

not loaded with redundant and junk data.

Of the most crucial factors, successive crawling is often ignored. Successive crawling refers to crawling certain web pages

repetitively to fetch data. What makes this such a big deal? Unwelcomed successive crawling can lead to attracting the wrath of

the site owners and the high probability of being sued for a class action suit.

While this is a very crucial concern with web scraping products , web extraction as a service takes care of all the internet ethics

and code of conduct while respecting the politeness policies of web pages and permissible penetration depth limits.

Botscraper ensures that if a process is to be done, it might as well be done in a very legal and ethical manner. Botscraper uses

world class technology to ensure that all web extraction processes are conducted with maximum efficacy while playing by the

rules.

An important feature of the service model of web extraction is its capability to deal with complex site structures and focused

extraction from multiple platforms. Web scraping as a service requires adhering to various fine-tuning processes. This is exactly

what botscraper offers along with a highly competitive price structure and a high class of data quality.

While many product-based models tend to overlook the legal aspects of web extraction, data extraction from the web as a service

covers it much more ingeniously. While associating with botscraper as web scraping service provider, legal problems should be

the least of your worries.

Botscraper as a company and technology ensures that all politeness protocol, penetration limits, robots.txt and even the informal

code of ethics is considered while extracting the most relevant data with high efficiency.  Plagiarism and copyright concerns are

dealt with utmost care and diligence at Botscraper.

The key takeaway would be that, product-based web extraction models may look appealing from a cost perspective- that too only

at the face of it, but web extraction as a service is what will fetch maximum value to your analytical needs. Ranging right from

flexibility, customization to legal coverage, web extraction services score above web extraction product and among the web

extraction service provider fraternity, botscraper is definitely the preferred choice.


Source: http://www.botscraper.com/blog/Data-Extraction-Product-vs-Web-Scraping-Service-which-is-best-