In this blog, we will go over the importance of real-time data extraction and how to extract and monitor big data in real-time efficiently. We will also show you how to identify sources to scrape from, the best web scraping approach and some challenges you may face when real-time web scraping. Finally, we will go over ParseHub Plus, the best real-time enterprise web scraping solution for your big data needs!
Real-time data scraping and monitoring is growing in popularity as businesses try to solidify their business intelligence, strategies and decision-making. Some businesses use real-time data for machine learning algorithms, and some use it to monitor the news and their backlinks for SEO, but the most common use-case is price monitoring. Some other use cases are strategy or market research, risk management, sentiment analysis and crisis management, all of which may require real-time data.
Data is one of the most valuable assets a business has, and by web scraping, you will increase your company’s competitive advantage and profitability. Here are some ways to efficiently extract and monitor big data in real-time:
Identifying Data Sources
To begin your large-scale web scraping, in real-time, you first need to have a list of relevant websites. After creating your list you need to ensure the data is of quality and reliability for your big data needs. If the data is not validated or is incorrect, it can cause big deviations and problems depending on your use case. You can optimize your data strategy by working with a dedicated enterprise web scraping team, such as ParseHub Plus, to ensure your data is one hundred percent accurate for usage. Our team will source the data for you, will scrape it in real-time on a scheduled basis, and will validate your data with custom scripts, to guarantee the most accurate data.
Choosing Your Web Scraping Approach
Once you have identified the data sources you wish to scrape from, such as your competitors, it’s time to choose your web scraping approach. Scalability is a big issue when scraping real-time data, as the more pages and competitors you are scraping from, the more memory intensive the data extraction will be. Your business may decide to create its own web scraper, with a python library for example, but unfortunately, this approach requires lots of custom scripting and troubleshooting. There is no point in reinventing the wheel, and many software already exists for web scraping data for you. In fact, ParseHub is one of the leading web scrapers in the world, allowing thousands of businesses like yours to web scrape without a single line of code. Custom coding your own web scraper will bring you a lot of challenges, especially when large-scale e-commerce web scraping, as those websites usually protect themselves with anti-scraping measures.
Real-Time Data Extraction Challenges
There are many web scraping limitations and obstacles, especially when doing real-time web scraping and/or coding your own web scraper. The most common challenges are bypassing limits or anti-scraping measures such as CAPTCHA or IP blocks. These roadblocks would need to be bypassed via your custom code, or a human, which is inefficient for real-time data extraction. Other challenges are handling dynamic content or nested data. Finally, as discussed earlier, data consistency and accuracy are other common issues.
Thankfully, with ParseHub Plus, you will not have to deal with any web scraping scripts or software at all. You will never get blocked yourself or run into issues scraping dynamic websites, as all your projects will be managed and handled by a dedicated web scraping team!
Ensuring Compliance With Ethical Web Scraping
When it comes to web scraping, it’s important to understand the legal and ethical implications, especially when conducting real-time data extraction. As real-time data extraction requires multiple visits to certain web pages, it may be less ethical than a single scrape. With ParseHub Plus, we ensure efficient web scraping, and will not overwhelm websites. However, with custom-coded web scrapers, it’s important to have efficiency in mind, so you do not slow down a website or cause any denial of service, indirectly. ParseHub Plus ensures all data sourcing is compliant with legal requirements and is conducted in an ethical manner.
Managed Enterprise Real-Time Data Extraction
There are many reasons to choose a dedicated, managed and enterprise version of ParseHub for improving your business and sales, monitoring, strategy and overall business. All the data is sourced for you, extracted in real-time and shared with an API, and is even validated by our dedicated team with custom validation scripts to ensure the most accurate data!
As everything is managed, you will not have to worry about common challenges, blocks, ethical and legal complications or anything else you may face when web scraping in-house.
Book your free call with ParseHub Plus, and get your free sample data export!
Happy Scraping!
