Unfortunately, for many years and still today, public web data collection – or “web scraping” – has had a negative connotation for several organizations. But it’s time to face reality. To maintain a strong foothold in your industry, get the answers you need for your business, and thrive ahead, you must disregard several common myths. Let’s break them together:

#1 – It’s illegal.

The short answer is, no it’s not. If the website is public, or does not require a log-in, it’s legally accessible. This verdict was most recently displayed in the hiQ Labs vs. LinkedIn case, where the Ninth Circuit ruled data scraping to not be unlawful.

Public web scraping is performed by organizations of all sizes globally. It’s used to evaluate internal operations, back up key business decisions, and get a full grasp of the market to pursue new innovations and boost revenues. Of course, as part of this, compliance regulations must play a major role. Businesses (or their public web data collection providers) have guidelines they must follow to remain legal. This entails a strong understanding of what you are and aren’t allowed to collect. And since there is still limited regulation in the industry, companies are mainly held to moral and ethical standards when it comes to legal data collection.

#2 – It hinders your organization.

Contrary to this belief, public web scraping enhances your organization. It offers real-time, precise insights into your competitors and your customers. This could include anything from pricing to shopping habits, as well as crucial trends and innovations that you should take advantage of in the market.

The pandemic sparked a massive shift to a digital economy. Legacy business strategies like undercover shoppers therefore shifted to online data collection. Now, you can receive even greater and more accurate insights while cutting the time and energy required by your organization as much as 80%. You can increase your teams’ time spent on innovation and truly push your business forward. As result, public data collection strongly benefits consumers as well. They receive more appealing or advanced  products, obviously better pricing, and greater shopping experiences overall.

#3 – It’s legal, but unethical.

This falls on either the organization or the external web data provider. When accessing public data, they must be professional and act with transparency when sourcing the data. This includes all parties firmly abiding by both global compliance regulations and deeply-rooted ethical guidelines. To put it simply, ethical and legal public web scraping offers the same internet view, insights, and transparency that an individual user has access to – and enjoys.

#4 – The sources are private.

In fact, most of today’s web data is public. According to researchers, as of January 2022, roughly 62.5% of our global population (4.95 billion people) uses the internet. And of the data being created from this significant online use, it’s estimated that nearly 70% is public. Essentially, anything that can be opened via a standard browser without a log in. This is what businesses and providers are accessing through web scraping – and the data set only expands each year as more and more people use the internet globally.

#5 – It makes you untrustworthy.

The final common misconception we’ll walk through is that if you collect web data, then you’re up to no good. In reality, various organizations (from startups to large enterprises) around the world are acquiring, analyzing, and employing it to their day-to-day operations – even as you read this article. In order to succeed in today’s constantly moving and highly competitive business world, companies must receive the full picture by utilizing this massive data resource that is only growing.

The web data industry will continue to expand as more and more market sectors begin to take advantage of its benefits. To survive, and as part of our moral obligation, all participants must remember to act legally and ethically at all times. This is essential.

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Growing markets for external data

Tomas Montvilas, Chief Commercial Officer at Oxylabs, says that more industries will discover the benefits of using external data in the upcoming year. He lists a few:

“The market of SaaS products that use external data to provide insights for their clients will grow further in 2022. The successful IPOs of such companies as Semrush, Similarweb, and Zoominfo, among others, are driving further investments in the field and we are likely to see more stars emerging,” Tomas says.

Cybersecurity is another important area he sees for the web scraping industry’s growth. Cyber threats are becoming more advanced and require new measures of defense. This is where web monitoring and scraping technologies come in.

“Constant monitoring of both public web and dark web can help identify malicious sites and programs early. It can also help catch data leaks sooner by finding data sets when they go for sale on the dark web, and recognize the actions of hacker groups. Meanwhile, proxies can serve well in email protection, by providing the ability to scan emails from different IP addresses,” he explains.

Data management role in business further increasing

With the recent explosion in digitizing everything, data management and analytics became central roles in business. Data departments have experienced exponential growth the past few years, and the growth will continue in 2022.

Gediminas Rickevičius, Vice President of Global Partnerships at Oxylabs, notes that the increasing importance of data departments can be easily illustrated by budgeting trends. According to several recent surveys Oxylabs of the UK’s finance and ecommerce industries, 51% of ecommerce and 43% of financial services data departments expect to increase their budgets.

Another trend Gediminas predicts for data departments will be the increasing outsourcing of automated public web data gathering tools. There will be several reasons for this. First, as companies become dependent on external data, manual data gathering processes are simply not sufficient. Another important factor is the current job market.

“With “the great resignation” and lack of human resources being the dominant topics of 2021 it became even harder to find in-house professionals who could dedicate all their time for maintaining and adjusting web scraping infrastructure. Outsourcing this task optimizes resources and focus on data analysis, rather than acquisition, says Gediminas.

Pressure for Big Tech could affect web data industry

Pressure on Big Tech from governments around the world has grown in recent years. There will likely be a push for new regulations, especially around acquisition and aggregation of personal data in 2022.

The data gathering industry should not turn a blind eye on these processes, according to Denas Grybauskas, Head of Legal at Oxylabs. Some big tech companies might already be in the process of restricting access to public web data because of government pressure, which could affect many businesses.

“Some companies are preparing for the old life tactic – pointing fingers. That is what, at least in accordance with the leaked emails, Meta (Facebook) is planning to do in terms of personal data leaks and data scraping companies – to shift the attention from leaks by stating that personal data got out in the wild not due to Facebook’s mistakes, but those of scrapers,” Denas says.

Moving towards industry self-regulation

When it comes to strategic development of the data gathering industry, ethics and legal implications will remain the hot topic in 2022, pushing the industry to continue raising the standards. I believe, that ethical proxy acquisition and strong KYC practices will dominate the conversation.

As with most new technologies, web scraping is developing faster than the regulation that could safeguard it from potential misuse cases. Therefore, the industry itself has to take the lead in developing the self-regulation guidelines and standards for the proper use of technology.

The issue is set to become more mainstream in 2022. First of all, as the largest industry players are setting the tone, smaller players are likely to follow. Secondly, brands that use proxy services are putting more emphasis on the nature of proxies too, as potential misuse could damage their reputation as well.

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