Many different corporations use web scraping, for a variety of projects. Some use web scraping to become more profitable, and many companies use web scraping to scrape large amounts of financial data. In addition, web scraping can be used for market research, price analysis, sales and many other enterprise use cases.
Web scraping can be a handy tool for companies and individuals. It can help you gather data more efficiently, and it can also help you automate tasks that would otherwise be repetitive and time-consuming. Web scraping can be used for various purposes, and it can be a great way to collect data that you otherwise would not have access to.
There are many different ways to scrape the web, and there are tools that you can use to do it. Some people prefer to use web scraping software, such as ParseHub, which makes web scraping easy.
In this blog post, we will discuss 5 different obstacles you may face when scraping large amounts of data, and how ParseHub Plus helps enterprise clients with their big data needs!
1. IP Blocks
When scraping large amounts of data from a single IP address, your web scraping script or software will be easily detected and blocked. This is a common obstacle that web scrapers face, especially when scraping websites that host large amounts of data.
ParseHub overcomes this obstacle by using our IP rotation feature. This feature allows you to scrape data from multiple IP addresses, which makes it more difficult for websites to detect and block your enterprise web scraping. Also, when working with ParseHub Plus, all your big data requirements will be fulfilled and managed by a dedicated team, so you won’t have to worry about bypassing IP blocks!
2. Captchas
Another obstacle large-scale web scrapers face is captcha and human verification checkpoints. Captchas are triggered similarly to IP blocks and often arise when there are too many pages requested on a single IP. Bypassing these blocks will usually require you to use IP rotation again, and maybe a captcha solver.
ParseHub comes with IP rotation and captcha solving, which is easy to use for any business or individual. When working with ParseHub Plus, all the data extractions will be handled by our dedicated team, so you will not need to worry about IP or captcha blocks at all.
3. Website Changes
If your corporation has created custom-coded web scrapers, you probably have faced many issues when websites change their layout, or how their data is displayed. Web scraping scripts often break when there are changes on a website, and can be frustrating to fix.
Most websites that host large amounts of data often change their layout or structure, and therefore will break web scraping scripts, and even projects on web scraping software such as ParseHub as well. Although it’s much easier to fix your ParseHub project than recode your web scraper, ParseHub Plus takes care of all your web scraping needs with managed big data extraction.
4. Interactive Data
Many modern websites show their data in a dynamic or interactive fashion. For example, lots of stock, commodity or crypto market websites host data with visualization and interactive charts. Although this is great for a user, it’s hard for web scraping, especially when coding your own script.
ParseHub has many features that allow you to extract data from interactive or dynamic websites. These features include being able to scrape data that appears on a hover and being able to scroll down a website to load more information. When working with the enterprise version of ParseHub, all your data extraction will be handled for you, which means you will not need to worry about scraping hard-to-reach data.
5. Legal Issues
The legality of web scraping is a highly debated topic. As long as the information is public, and not behind any authentication, it should be okay to scrape. If you’re trying to scrape private or confidential data, then it would be illegal to pursue such endeavours. Ethics also falls into this category, as some say web scraping and crawling can slow down a website. However, when using an efficient tool like ParseHub, a single parse-through is all you require to gather data.
ParseHub Plus ensures all the data you extract and acquire will be publically available, and legal to scrape. Working with ParseHub Plus, you will not need to worry about the legality of web scraping, as everything will be handled on ParseHub’s end.
Concluding Thoughts
In the end, there are many obstacles that you will face when web scraping, especially if you are working with your own scripts. You may run into IP blocks, captcha checkpoints, website changes, dynamically displayed data and even legal issues. Many of these obstacles can be avoided when using a full-featured, visual web scraper such as ParseHub. However, when working with large amounts of data for enterprise-level use cases, we recommend having your own web scraping team. ParseHub Plus is the enterprise solution for corporations that require up-to-date big data at their disposal. ParseHub Plus is a managed service which provides you with daily support and management; such as reconfiguring web scraping scripts to ensure a consistent flow of data.
If your corporation requires large amounts of scraped data, visit ParseHub Plus to book a call and get your free data export!
Happy Scraping!
