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.

The post Ignore Common Misconceptions About Web Data Collection appeared first on Grit Daily News.

The survey found that completely outsourcing data collection is the least popular method while a hybrid option of combining internal web scraping practices and outsourcing was more popular (38%). The findings demonstrate that web scraping still remains a complicated and intricate practice among organizations, which needs close oversight, particularly in heavily regulated industries such as the financial services sector.

Aleksandras Šulženko, Product Owner at Oxylabs said: “Such a low preference for outsourcing is a little surprising but it’s clear that better trust in web scraping has to be developed. We know that web scraping has become an essential part of financial services, yet so few companies trust third-party services.

“The findings indicate a hidden issue with how web scraping is understood and what goals it can achieve, bringing those third-party companies back to the drawing board. Outsourcers need to better communicate how their services work and how their methods are secure and compliant, which is one of a number of challenges the industry is facing at the moment.”

Among the hurdles experienced by organizations when implementing web scraping activities, ensuring high-quality data tops the list (cited by 42% of respondents), followed closely by managing and processing large datasets at 41%. Other challenges, such as finding the most efficient tools, ensuring a consistent data flow, getting real-time data, or finding reliable partners to outsource to, are equally distributed and similarly important for decision-makers in financial services.

Šulženko continued: “In the finance industry, the quality of data directly defines the quality of business decisions as even small deviations might lead to incorrect conclusions. As a result, organizations put more trust into their internal teams as they can put the necessary checkpoints in place at every stage of the data management process.

“If organizations are to begin putting their trust in third parties, these parties need to communicate how they can tailor collection and analysis more efficiently than an internal team as well as how they can tackle the issues many face when implementing web scraping. For example, outsourcing to a third-party web scraping solutions provider is an easy option that requires minimal start-up costs and the data acquired can be integrated almost immediately.”

Understanding that data must be treated sensitively, the finance industry takes careful measures to stay in line with regulations. Almost all surveyed companies (99%) have a data compliance function – be it internal, external or both. This could be explained by the specifics of the industry, where any possible risk could lead to major financial consequences, coupled with the fact that financial data is inherently confidential.

“Web scraping produces a significant amount of value not only to financial organizations but all companies, especially if that information can be utilized effectively. While a third-party web scraping solutions provider is the easier and cheaper option for organizations, it seems the majority prefer to look internally and will continue to do so until the challenges around web scraping are addressed,” concluded Šulženko.

To download your copy of the Oxylabs Alternative Data Unlocks Key Decisions in the UK & US Finance Industries white paper, please visit HERE.

The post Oxylabs Research Finds Half of Organizations Distrust Third Party Data Collection appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Dynamic pricing exploded onto the scene because it’s so easy to understand and so effective. Unfortunately, that resulted in dynamic pricing overshadowing all other web scraping business cases of which there are many.

Understanding web scraping

Web scraping, if we walk away from all the technical details, is a simple process. An automated program somehow, whether automatically or through human input, acquires a set of URLs. It then goes through the URLs, extracts the data contained in the page, and moves on to the next one.

As the script moves through all the URLs, the data collected is stored locally in memory. It then searches for specific information from all the collected pages. Sometimes these scripts might accept user input for keywords or other options.

In the end, the extracted data is exported into some format with popular options being CSV and JSON. It might need to be parsed along the way in order to be made understandable for humans if manual analysis is required. For example, dynamic pricing applications implement fully (or at least in large part) automated solutions for data management to reduce the “downtime” between changes.

If it were so simple, however, there wouldn’t be any automated data collection service providers like us. While on the face of it there’s nothing complicated or technical about it, scraping at scale requires an enormous infrastructure with various tools implemented such as proxies.

Technical expertise is the lifeblood of any scraping project’s long-term survival. From our personal experience, even high-tech businesses struggle with in-house implementations of web scraping due to the complexities involved in the process. In fact, that was the catalyst for Oxylabs to start building the Scraper APIs we have now.

Data use cases

If it were just dynamic pricing, our efforts would have mostly gone to waste. While it’s a powerful and popular usage of data extraction methods, it’s by far not the only one. Data can be used in many creative ways. Some companies might be able to benefit from several ways of utilizing data.

A fairly simple example, but one that cannot be automated, is market research. Web scraping can be used over the entire course of development for a product or service. Enumerating all the competitors is a great start as in-depth data can be acquired about their offerings. 

Additionally, the entire internet can be searched for comments, reviews, and feedback left on forums and websites that can reveal other opportunities. Products and services can have common pain points that can easily be solved before entering a market.

Another use case revolves around the much deeper analysis. Venture capital and financial service companies were amongthe first candidates to start eyeing web scraping. Ever since the landmark paper Twitter mood predicts the stock market has been published, investment moguls rushed to take advantage of what is now called “alternative data”.

It got its name in contrast to traditional sources such as company financial reports, data from statistical reports, etc. Alternative data is composed of sources such as the aforementioned tweets, search trends, or even such unusual things as satellite imagery.

Investment companies and venture capitalists look for secondary signals from alternative data. It, however, takes a lot of effort and creativity. For example, changes in the vacancy of retail store parking lots indicate changes in business health. The question is how closely related these two factors are. A slight miscalculation can lead someone down a negative ROI road.

A glimpse into objective data

There have been claims about how data is so important nowadays. I think these are understatements, at best. Free (or nearly so) access to data opens completely new and previously unavailable opportunities.

The current trend towards customer engagement in marketing is a great example of how external data revolutionizes the process. Most of the time, getting input from customers requires sending out feedback forms or attempting to gather metrics such as Net Promoter Scores.

As any statistician would eagerly point out, data collected in such a manner doesn’t perfectly reflect the real situation of the business. Feedback forms are usually filled out by loyal or highly engaged customers. While their opinion is valuable, you’d likely want to hear the judgments from the average customer and even your detractors. 

A highly nitpicky statistician would point out that it would be heavily skewed, because the audience would be composed only of those that have already considered the products and services as valuable (or really annoying, in some cases). Finally, there’s a psychological part to it – customers know someone will be reading those forms, therefore they are not fully objective.

Web scraping can support these feedback forms by providing a glimpse into the fully objective side of the business. When someone posts a complaint on a forum that is completely unrelated to the business, they likely don’t expect that a representative will find it. Additionally, these offhand comments might unveil things that would never appear in feedback forms or NPS.

Conclusion

Data is not the future. The future is data. Opportunities opened up by large scale automated public data acquisition are in their infancy. In fact, I would go so far as to say that these processes will become so ubiquitous and so important that they will become the primary battleground for business competition.

The post Web Scraping Is Much More Than Just Dynamic Pricing appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Retailers can take insights on crafting a winning strategy for the most significant shopping event from last year’s statistics. In 2019, in the USA alone, over 93 million people chose to do their shopping online. With the Covid-19 global situation around the globe, this number unexpectedly will only grow, along with consumers’ ever-growing pricing sensitivity.

These insights mark a huge shift in the public’s spending patterns. Those retailers who will apply pricing intelligence and dynamic pricing to their e-commerce strategy will most likely come out on top during this Black Friday. 

Winning Black Friday with dynamic pricing  

The allure of Black Friday for consumers is all about attractive prices. Retailers in 2020 are faced with a challenging task to guarantee the largest possible profits while at the same time remaining competitive. 

To effectively address the challenge, dynamic pricing is a must. It is a practice employed by retailers to set flexible prices for their goods or services based on real-time demand. Prices are adjusted based on supply and demand fluctuations, competitors’ prices, and other market conditions.

Examples of dynamic pricing 

Most commonly, dynamic pricing is used by airline companies, transport services, and e-commerce websites. For example, a transport service can modify their ticket prices according to the demand. If a particular travel destination or time is particularly popular, the price is raised to capture larger revenue. In the opposite case, when the seats are left unsold, ticket prices tend to go down to attract more sales. 

E-commerce websites also use intelligent pricing to control supply and demand. Their dynamic pricing strategy is often based on various factors, including inventory levels, competitors’ prices, and even shopper location.

The same can be applied when crafting a winning pricing strategy for Black Friday. Switched-on retailers must consider the popularity of specific goods and services, as well as direct competitors’ pricing. In turn, this will allow setting the most optimal prices for their products and services, resulting in winning the customer of the new normal and a healthy bottom line.

How to apply dynamic pricing

Companies need to continually follow their competitors’ prices in real-time, which is one of the biggest challenges when implementing dynamic pricing, especially on a large scale. 

Retailers must make sure that the data they receive is accurate and updated continuously to adapt their pricing strategy accordingly. This requires having a reliable web data gathering infrastructure and expertise.

There is also an option for retailers to outsource real-time web data gathering solutions to effectively address business’ needs. In this case, retailers must be aware of the quality and type of data they want to obtain, as well as determine how much management or resources their preferred data acquisition method will require. 

Adapting to the new normal

Charles Darvin famously said: “it is not the strongest of the species that survives, it is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” It rings particularly true in the business environment. Companies such as Kodak, Nokia, and Myspace have experienced the unforgivable effects of failing to innovate and neglecting customer trends.

For a large part of the retail sector, dynamic pricing has been known to a limited degree due to complexities, which arise with data acquisition. However, its steady rise to popularity starts slowly pushing out companies that cannot compete against data-driven businesses. These switched-on retailers are already reaping the benefits of increased control in pricing strategy, better stock management, and larger revenue.

The post Retailers’ Winning Strategy of Black Friday 2020 appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Some businesses, however, are surviving and perhaps even thriving. Web scraping, data mining, and analysis are proving to be the tools of choice needed to make it through this crisis. My leadership role at Oxylabs has given me the privilege of seeing this unfold with a birds-eye view, and in this article I’m going to share the top ways you can use this indispensable tool to power your business forward.

Understanding Big Data

First, let’s talk about the growing importance of big data. The internet is always growing and changing, and the data it produces is just as dynamic. 

This ever-changing landscape gives unprecedented opportunities to leverage data collection techniques for strategic decision making. This is more important today than ever before. 

The latest research figures amplify this point: research by McKinsey shows that businesses employing advanced market research techniques beat out the competition by 85% in sales growth, and more than 25% in gross margin. Data by Forrester Research, Inc. confirms that businesses directly mining data grow more than 30% annually and have a higher earning potential for 2021. 

Web Scraping, Explained

For those unaware of the technicalities, web scraping is a technique that uses scripts (or “robots”) to crawl websites and extract data into a manageable format. 

The number of requests used by the script can create issues for the process, warranting the use of proxies to circumvent IP issues imposed by certain websites. 

The uses for web scraping are seemingly endless. If a business activity involves data, then web scraping is the premier method to obtain it. Businesses dependent on SEO, e-commerce, travel fare aggregation, accommodation aggregation, lead generation, event listings, investing, and any type of price comparison benefit from web scraping. 

The historical alternative was to make a spreadsheet and manually collect data. If manual collection is a horse and buggy, then data scraping is a rocket ship. 

The difference is massive. Web scraping is the 21-century answer to paper surveys, cold-calls and any other manual research techniques, allowing businesses to collect massive amounts of data quickly, easily, and more cost-efficiently than ever before.

8 Ways Web Scraping Powers Businesses

There is no doubt web scraping is on the rise, and our research department reported massive increases over the last year. We expect this trend to continue despite the economic challenges we are facing.

To that end, here are some ways businesses are using web scraping to stay competitive and thrive in today’s market:

Price Comparisons

Price optimization techniques are essential to gaining customers in this highly-competitive environment. Web scraping can be used to crawl a competitor’s store and gather pricing, images, and product description information for use in creating a competitive pricing strategy. 

Besides being used for consumer goods, similar web crawling techniques are employed to create price aggregator websites similar to those that sell airline tickets or rental accommodation.

Online Reputation

A famous and very real quote from the movie The Social Network revealed to us that “the Internet’s not written in pencil, it’s written in ink.”

What gets published never really seems to go away. Having said that, online reputation management is critical for companies looking to uphold the positive opinion of their brand.

To that end, web scraping can be used to reveal publicly available information published by social media “influencers” or opinion leaders mentioning the brand, in addition to any hashtags or trending topics where the brand is being discussed on public forums or review sites. Accordingly, detecting fraudulent negative reviews published by competitors is another important use for web scraping that enables businesses to monitor what is being said about the brand and verify its authenticity.

Ad Verification (Fraud Prevention)

Advertisement opportunities have evolved with the times. As a consequence, advertisement fraud has evolved with it and these days it’s on an entirely new level.

Imagine the advertising budget of a business literally going down the drain due to ads being placed on fraudulent websites, ads from different companies being stacked on top of each other, invisible ads being placed in a single pixel, ad clicks being manufactured by bots, and more.

The use of these fraudulent techniques manufactures false statistics showing clicks while the ads never reach their target audience.

Web scraping can be used by advertisers or ad verification companies to verify the ad, its location, and if it is reaching the intended audience. 

By using verification tags inside the ad markup, advertisers can collect data about the content published on the host site that determines if the page is suitable for the ad and the intended audience is reached.

A diverse proxy pool that uses connections from a diverse range of locations can give insight into how geographically-targeted audiences are seeing the ad. 

The collected data is then analysed by the advertiser or ad verification company to track any relevant metrics related to ad performance.

Professional Directories

Websites containing public information can be scraped to obtain details about professionals for the creation of a custom directory. A useful resource could be an online catalog of doctors in a specific specialty or professionals in trades at a specific location.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Advanced SEO specialists can use web scraping to rank pages by researching particular search terms and the relevant competition. Information obtained can include the specific title tags and targeted keywords, giving them an idea of which keywords drive traffic and what type of content drives user engagement and backlinking. 

Product Competitiveness

Besides pricing strategies, e-commerce businesses can benefit from monitoring the competitor’s entire operation, including their catalog, specific product attributes, special promotions, shipping details and product availability. 

Lead Generation

Leads can be found by scraping data from public websites like Yelp or Yellow Pages that can include the business profile, email address, phone number, industry, location and working hours. 

Human Resources

With demand for jobs increasing continuously, the need for specialized job boards is expected to increase as well. Web scraping can be used by HR managers to find ideal candidates in addition to being used by educational institutions to discover what skills are in demand. 

A Final Word

This article barely scratches the surface of how web scraping can be used. Analysts across many industries are now stating that data is more valuable than oil. Similar to oil, however, the techniques used to extract the data can make all the difference in the quality of the results obtained.  

Difficult economic times often reveal who the best players are in any industry, and often the best players are those that embrace innovation.

The importance of big data cannot be underestimated. Data is the fuel of the internet, and its increasing amount and importance requires increasingly sophisticated tools for collection and analysis. Web scraping is one of those essential tools. 

The post Data Mining Post COVID-19: 8 Ways Online Businesses Can Stay Competitive appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Commonly known as a web scraper, a scraping tool automates the way in which businesses retrieve large amounts of web data for various purposes. It then saves the data in a database, a local file in the computer, or a spreadsheet for further analysis.

By using the insights obtained from analyzing the data, a business is able to make major decisions that keep it profitable and competitive. Some industries rely entirely on web scraping for their operations, such as travel fare aggregators.  

Scraping tools operate with the use of proxy servers. A proxy acts as a gateway between the device scraping data and the web server. 

When the device with the scraper makes a web request, it goes to the proxy server first. The proxy then masks the device’s real IP address and instead displays the proxy’s IP address, which could be attached to a different physical location. And the search results follow the same route back to the scraper.   

Why Is a Proxy Necessary When Scraping Data?

Some websites try to keep people from extracting data from their sites. Scraping tools make use of proxy servers with rotating IPs to give the impression of organic traffic. It reduces the chances of getting blocked or banned. 

Proxy servers also make it possible to access geo-blocked sites and collect data from local websites.

Let’s look at more specific reasons why your business needs web scraping tools.

1) Market Research

Every business thrives on understanding their target market. You can only supply marketable products if you know what the consumer needs. And these needs change with changing trends. You need an effective and automatic scraping tool to keep up with these changes. 

A web scraper collects real-time data, ensuring that you are always up to date. By applying the data collected in your product creation and marketing strategies, you can remain relevant in your industry.

2) Generating Leads

Marketing does not just involve creating ads and having sales. Aggressive marketing consists of reaching out to potential customers directly through email, text, or calls. Manually finding the right leads and their contact details is time-consuming.

With a scraping tool, you can automatically collect contact information of possible leads from online resources such as yellow pages directories. It will then import this data to your computer for easy access. 

3) Finding Potential Employees from Web Data

One way your business will succeed is by working with the best human capital and retaining it. And calling in for job applications may not yield the best results. You need top-class employees to build a top-class business.  

By scraping websites and applying the right filters, you can retrieve data on various experts in the positions you need to fill. Use avenues such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to get the best candidates.  

4) Price Scraping

Some price-sensitive customers will go as far as using scraping tools to find the most affordable prices. If you can apply the same technique to set the lowest prices, you can attract a larger market.

Price scraping refers to the process of using scraping tools to monitor the product prices of your competitors on their websites and e-commerce sites. Using this data, you can set competitive prices that are lower than your competitors, but high enough to earn profits. 

5) Collecting Customer Feedback

Some customers will not come to your social media pages or website to leave reviews about your product or service. They will use review websites such as Yelp and Better Business Bureau. If you are not keen, you could miss valuable customer feedback about your business and lose your reputation.

It’s hard to keep track of the reviews on these websites manually. By using a scraping tool, you can extract real-time views of the public concerning your business, address complaints on time, and maintain a loyal and satisfied customer base.

6) Keeping an Eye on the Competition

“Know your enemies and know yourself.” Every business should play by this rule. Being aware of what the public is saying about your product is not enough; you need to know what the market is saying about your competitors. It helps you identify your competitive advantages and disadvantages, and with this information, you can make more strategic decisions.

Gathering data on your competitors will also ensure that you are always aware of your competitors’ moves so that you are not blind-sided. This information can also provide insight into how your competitors may respond to your new products or prices. 

Conclusion

There is a lot of useful information you can derive from web data that will: 

• Give you a competitive edge
• Attract new customers
• Keep customers satisfied
• Increase your profits 

Using a capable scraping tool will target the right resources and collect relevant information without much hassle.

Related: Startups are Helping in the Fight Against Coronavirus

The article Gathering Web Data With Scraping Tools first appeared on Innovation & Tech Today.

The post Gathering Web Data With Scraping Tools appeared first on Grit Daily News.