Future of Alternative Data Web Scraping in 2024

In today's business world, data drives markets, economies and personal lives. Alternative Data Web Scraping provide more information than traditional data. Alternative data creates a competitive edge in the market and helps make better decisions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and advanced web scraping tools made data extraction easier. Alternative data provides unique insights into customer needs, behaviour patterns and market trends.

The future of Alternative Data Web Scraping is brighter than ever. In this blog, let us explore the impact of web scraping on data extraction.

Web Scraping

Web scraping is the extraction of data from websites. The data extracted is unstructured and coded. The applications like AWS, Apache-Hadoop or Spark convert it to structured readable data. Some websites like Google, Twitter, eBay, Walmart, Meta and Amazon have APIs. These APIs allow web scraping. Some websites do not allow users to access large amounts of data from websites. In such cases, web scraping companies develop their APIs to access and extract data.

Web scraping has two parts, crawlers and scrapers. A web crawler or spider is an algorithm that visits and collects URLs to create a web map of desired websites. Scrapers are tools that use data from web crawlers to extract data. Web crawlers and scraper tools work together to discover and extract data from new websites.

Alternative Data

Alternative data is data that is available outside traditional sources. Alternative data is extracted from smart devices, satellite imagery, IoT and mobile phones. This data helps businesses make better decisions about product development and marketing campaigns.

Traditional data is structured data collected from reliable sources like government agencies, company statements or surveys. Alternative data is unstructured data from web scraping, which provides real-time information from desired websites.

Advantages of Alternative Data Web Scraping

Alternative Data Web Scraping are transformative industries that provide businesses with vast amounts of real-time information. Here are some advantages of these tools and their impact on businesses.

Market Insights

Alternative Data Web Scraping provide dynamic and real-time access to information. This data provides insights that traditional data cannot. Analysing this data helps businesses stay ahead of the market trends.

Enhanced Data Collection

Web Scraping collects data effectively and quickly from different sources. It can also extract data from websites that frequently update and have large files. The automation of web crawling and scraping tasks improves the quality of data. Web scraping collects real-time data to help businesses understand customer needs.

Improved Risk Management

Analysing the alternative data helps businesses identify new risks and customer needs. Financial institutions and companies use alternative data to develop strategies that reduce risk.

Challenges in Alternative Data Web Scraping

Today's web scraping tools are very efficient, yet the dynamic nature of the internet is still a challenge for scrapers.

Web Architecture

The complex web architectures of some websites make it difficult to extract data. It is crucial to understand the architecture before attempting to scrape it.

Security Measures

Some companies use security measures to prevent data scraping. Measures like CAPTCHAs, honey pots or web application firewalls challenge scrapers. Use the CAPTCHA proxy and avoid hidden links to outsmart these security measures.

Dynamic Content

Companies update the content and features to improve user experience. In recent days, JavaScript codes have been used to generate dynamic content. To extract data from such complex browsers, web scrapers use headless browsers. This allows scrapers to interact with the website without a Graphic User Interface (GUI).

Login Requirement

Some websites ask for login credentials to access desired data. The website then sends a cookie to identify and track user activities on the website. Another common approach is two-factor authentication, which prevents scrapers from accessing the data.

Alternative Data Web Scraping in 2024

With the disruption of AI, the use cases of Web scraping are extensive. From training AI models to creating chatbots, web scraping has innovative uses. Multimodal AI is the next big thing in 2024; as AI continues to grow, web scraping becomes more powerful. Multimodal AI requires data scraping in all formats to train AI for data labelling.

Web scraping powered by AI is a superpower. Using no/low code scraping tools makes the lives of developers easier. Open-source scrapers like Apify SDK, Web-harvest and Scrapy have already made their way to No Code Club. With the shift in legal implications in the web scraping industry, the results of AI web scraping are unpredictable.

Financial Institutions have lots and lots of data. Due to the rise of Decentralised Finance, companies need to stay ahead of the curve. Web scraping solutions help analysts make investment decisions and trends. Alternative data identify new DeFi protocols, features and potential partnerships in the market.

Why wait weeks for product performance reports? Alternative data can provide product reviews, prices and shifts in demand. Product reviews from platforms like Amazon, eBay and Social Media are a great source of information. This data provides information about customer needs and preferences.

How to find out if a website allows web scraping?

Check using the robot.txt file.

One of the easiest ways to find out if a website allows web scraping is by checking the robot.txt file. This file tells the search engine which page on the website allows crawling and indexing. Add /robot.txt at the end of the URL, it allows scraping public data.

For example - https://google.com/robots.txt

If the robot.txt file has directive blocks, the website will block the crawlers to prevent scraping.

Check terms and services

The terms and services are a legal agreement between the website owner and the user. They mention rules and regulations for accessing and scraping data. If you come across a website that allows scraping through /robot.txt file, it is advisable to check the terms and services before scraping.

Web Scraping Rules

As long as you are a guest on the website, it is recommended to follow some rules while scraping the data. Here are some guidelines to be followed for responsible scraping.

Do not damage the website.

The volume and frequency of requests will overload the website and interrupt regular operations. Avoid triggering the website by following these methods:

Do not violate copyright.

Scraping copyrighted data can lead to legal obligations. Check if the information is copyrighted before scraping. Usually, companies have exclusive rights to content like articles, videos, images and databases. Respect the legal implications and avoid scraping copyrighted content.

Do not violate personal Information.

It is known that user leaves digital footprints across the web, which helps identify a person. These digital prints include personal data and other sensitive information. Web scrapers should avoid data like names, phone numbers, addresses, IP addresses and bank details.

Applications of Alternative Data Web Scraping across Industries

Alternative Data Web Scraping are the most powerful tools that help businesses with market trends. These tools have applications across a variety of industries and businesses of all sizes.

Market Research

Alternative data helps businesses identify consumer behaviour, market trends and competitor activity. The data from surveys, review pages and social media platforms gives a competitive advantage. This helps with product development, identifying challenges and improving marketing campaigns.

Retail

The retail industry gathers data about competitors' prices and customer reviews. This helps identify the areas of improvement and product opportunities and make business decisions. Alternative data can be used to track inventory to avoid stockouts.

Travel & Tourism

Alternative data from ticketing sites, booking sites and vehicle rental sites, helps to plan itineraries. Data scraped from other hotel booking apps to display the best booking deals. Hotel booking apps use alternative data to identify availability and find the best deals.

Finance

The data from finance company websites, news articles and government websites serves a variety of purposes. Data finds its way into the finance industry, from investment decisions to developing strategies. This helps businesses adopt economic trends and trading activities and identify new opportunities.

Web Scraping Tools

There are hundreds of web scrapping tools in the market that will help you extract the desired data. Need help deciding which one to choose? We have the right tool for all your scraping needs. Custom-made scraping tools to cater for the specific needs of your business. API-based scraping tools for flexible and reliable scraping. Easy to use No-code scraping tools with rich features. We have a scraping tool for your every business need.

With pre-built modules, iWeb Scraping allows data scraping without worrying about security measures. Sign up for a free consultation and see why we are the right choice.

Conclusion

The sources of data are growing with the evolving technology. With all the data, Alternative Data Web Scraping has become more powerful than ever. Using alternative data is gaining a competitive advantage across industries.

The sources of data are growing with the evolving technology. With all the data, Alternative to web scraping have become more powerful than ever. Using alternative data is gaining a competitive advantage across industries. 

Check out our web scraping services to gain insights into your customer needs and market trends.