5 Ways Web Scraping Can Be Useful for You

The amount of publicly available data that can be harnessed today is mind-blowing. We store virtually everything in the cloud, and we share the majority of our lives on social media platforms, blogs, and other websites.

There are also websites that capture user inputs and display them publicly, such as online polls and recruitment websites.

These data sets can be utilized for a wide range of purposes. On top of that, collecting data from websites is easier now that web scraping has gotten more advanced. 

You can’t scrape the web efficiently if you don’t use proxies. Choose residential proxies for the best scraping experience as they will allow you to get around restrictions imposed by select websites and stay completely anonymous.

Using a reliable residential proxy provider like the one found here, you can also overcome regional restrictions.

But why do we gather online data using web scraping? How do we achieve specific objectives with web scraping?

There are multiple ways to utilize web scraping for added benefits, and we are going to review some of them in this article.

Gathering Leads

The most common use case for web scraping is lead generation. With websites like LinkedIn and JobsDB posting email addresses and positions of professionals, more and more marketers are now turning to web scraping to learn more about their potential customers.

Lead generation using web scraping is even more powerful when you start adding tools like SalesForce and Zapier.

The combination allows for data from web scraping to be fed to a CRM system directly, allowing for the entire lead generation process to be automated.

Automation is the key here. You no longer have to make cold calls or send generic emails to potential clients. You can make even the first message you send highly personalized based on the information gathered from public websites.

Also Read: 8 Signs Your Website Isn’t Optimized For Search Engines

Finding Prices

Price intelligence is another example of why you would want to scrape the web.. Once again, a reliable proxy provider allows you to gather data from multiple websites periodically.

This means you can have a database of prices for certain items that gets updated regularly.

Price intelligence is handy for businesses who want to remain competitive on the market. Using price intelligence, you can position your product or service to compete with that of your competitors with strategic pricing.

You can also identify changes that competitors are making on the market.

Another use of price intelligence is for buying items at low prices. You can use web scraping to find information about discounts and special prices, and then time your purchases of certain items accordingly.

A lot of people (and businesses) are doing this to reduce their costs.

Sniping Items

Sticking with gathering price information, you can also use price intelligence – and web scraping – to find rare items at the best prices. This time, web scraping is used in conjunction with bots that automatically bid or buy items that meet the criteria.

If you are familiar with the sneakers culture, you probably know that many top players and sneakerheads now use this method to gain a competitive advantage.

When a new pair of limited-edition sneakers is made available, the bot gets notified and will automatically buy the item within a fraction of a second.

Sniping items is a relatively new use case, but it is garnering a lot of attention, nonetheless. Collectors are starting to use web scraping to find information about rate items on sites like eBay and Craigslist.

Instead of spending hours browsing through auctions and ads, web scraping can do it for you.

Market Analysis

The next use case we are going to talk about is market analysis. This is important, especially with instruments like cryptocurrencies becoming more accessible. What is the best way to identify market trends and sentiments? By listening to conversations.

If you scrape websites like Reddit and Twitter for cryptocurrency-related keywords, you will find that there are a lot of discussions.

You can then feed those discussions into a data processing algorithm and automatically identify market trends based on frequently mentioned words or other parameters.

You’ll be surprised by how powerful understanding discussions and market sentiment can be. If the recent GameStop case can turn Wall Street upside down, imagine how powerful knowing what small investors will do collectively next can be.

Also Read: My Response Is On My Own Website: Instant Dofollow Backlinks

General Information

Lastly, you can always turn to web scraping to collect any information you want. Everything from product details to news and mentions of select keywords can be collected, and all you need to get started is a good proxy provider and a reliable web scraping tool.

There is another interesting thing about web scraping too: if you abide by the law, it is a legal way to collect information.

Whether you are a business trying to gain a competitive advantage or someone who just wants to find a rare item, there is a lot to be gained from incorporating web scraping into how you find and collect information from the internet.