Data Mining vs Screen-Scraping

Data mining isn't screen-scraping. I know that some people in the room may disagree with that statement, but they're actually two almost completely different concepts.

In a nutshell, you might state it this way: screen-scraping allows you to get information, where data mining allows you to analyze information. That's a pretty big simplification, so I'll elaborate a bit.

The term "screen-scraping" comes from the old mainframe terminal days where people worked on computers with green and black screens containing only text. Screen-scraping was used to extract characters from the screens so that they could be analyzed. Fast-forwarding to the web world of today, screen-scraping now most commonly refers to extracting information from web sites. That is, computer programs can "crawl" or "spider" through web sites, pulling out data. People often do this to build things like comparison shopping engines, archive web pages, or simply download text to a spreadsheet so that it can be filtered and analyzed.

Data mining, on the other hand, is defined by Wikipedia as the "practice of automatically searching large stores of data for patterns." In other words, you already have the data, and you're now analyzing it to learn useful things about it. Data mining often involves lots of complex algorithms based on statistical methods. It has nothing to do with how you got the data in the first place. In data mining you only care about analyzing what's already there.

The difficulty is that people who don't know the term "screen-scraping" will try Googling for anything that resembles it. We include a number of these terms on our web site to help such folks; for example, we created pages entitled Text Data Mining, Automated Data Collection, Web Site Data Extraction, and even Web Site Ripper (I suppose "scraping" is sort of like "ripping"). So it presents a bit of a problem-we don't necessarily want to perpetuate a misconception (i.e., screen-scraping = data mining), but we also have to use terminology that people will actually use.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-vs-Screen-Scraping&id=146813

Data Collection - Make a Plan

Planning for the data collection activity provides a stable and reliable data collection process in the Measure phase.

A well-planned activity ensures that your efforts and costs will not be in vain. Data collection typically involves three phases: pre-collection, collection and post-collection.

Pre-collection activities: Goal setting and forming operational definitions are some of the pre-collection activities that form the basis for systematic and precise data collection.

1.  Setting goals and objectives: Goal setting and defining objectives is the most important part of the pre-collection phase.

It enables teams to give direction to the data to be collected. The plan includes description of the Six Sigma project being planned. It lists out specific data that is required for the further steps in the process.

If there are no specific details as to the data needs, the data collection activity will not be within scope - and may become irrelevant over a period of time.

The plan must mention the rationale of data being collected as well as the final utilization.

2.  Define operational definitions: The team must clearly define what and how data has to be collected. An operational definition of scope, time interval and the number of observations required is very important.

If it mentions the methodology to be used, it can act a very important guideline to all data collection team members.

An understanding of all applicable information can help ensure that there no misleading data is collected, which may be loosely interpreted leading to a disastrous outcome.

3.  Repeatability, stability and accuracy of data: The repeatability of the data being collected is very important.

This means that when the same operator undertakes that same activity on a later date, it should produce the same output. Additionally, it is reproducible if all operators reach the same outcome.

Measurement systems should be accurate and stable, such that outcomes are the same with similar equipment over a period of time.

The team may carry out testing to ensure that there is no reduction in these factors.

Collection Activity

After planning and defining goals, the actual data collection process starts according to plan. Going by the plan ensures that teams achieve expected results consistently and accurately.

Training can be undertaken so as to ensure that all data collection agents have a common understanding of data being collected. Black Belts or team leaders can look over the process initially to provide any support needed.

For data collection over a longer period, teams need to ensure regular oversight to ensure that no collection activities are overlooked.

Post collection activities

Once collection activities are completed, the accuracy and reliability of the data has to be reviewed.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Collection---Make-a-Plan&id=2792515

How Web Crawling Can Help Venture Capital Firms

How Web Crawling Can Help Venture Capital Firms

Venture capital firms are constantly on the lookout of innovative start-ups for investment. Whether you provide financial capital to early-stage start-ups in IT, software products, biotechnology or other booming industries, you will need the right information as soon as possible. In general, analysing media data to discover and validate insights is one of key areas in which analysts work. Hence, constantly monitoring popular media outlets is one of the ways VCs can deploy to spot trends. Read on to understand how web crawling can not only speed up this whole process but also improve the workflow and accuracy of insights.

What is web crawling

Web crawling simply refers to the use of automated computer programs to visit websites and extract specific bits of information. This is the same technology used by search engines to find, index and serve search results for user queries. Web crawling, as you’d have guessed is a technical and niche process. It takes skilled programmers to write programs that can navigate through the web to find and extract the needed data.

There are DIY tools, vertical specific data providers and DaaS (Data as a service) solutions that VC firms can deploy for crawling.  Although there is the option of setting up an in-house crawling setup, this isn’t recommended for Venture Capital firms. The high tech-barrier and complexity of web crawling process can lead to loss of focus for the VC firms. DaaS can be the ideal option as it’s suitable for recurring and large-scale requirements which only a hosted solution can offer.

How web crawling can help Venture Capital firms

Crawling start-up and entrepreneurship blogs using a web crawling service can help VC firms avail the much-needed data that they can use to discover new trends and validate their research. This can complement the existing research process and make it much more efficient.

1. Spot trends

Spotting new trends in the market is extremely important for venture capital firms. This helps identify the niches that have high probability of bringing in profit. Since investing in companies that have higher chances of succeeding is what Venture capital firms do, the ability to spot trends becomes an invaluable tool.

Web crawling can harvest enough data to identify trends in the market. Websites like Techcrunch and Venturebeat are great sources of start-up related news and information. Media sites like these talk about trending topics constantly. To spot trends in the market, you could use a web crawling solution to extract the article title, date and URL for the current time period and run this data through an analytics solution to identify the most used words in the article titles and URLs. Venture capital firms can then use these insights to target newer companies in the trending niches. Technology blogs, forums and communities can be great places to find relevant start-ups.

2. Validate findings

The manual research by the analysts needs to be validated before the firm can go ahead with further proceedings. Validation can be done by comparing the results of the manual work with the relevant data extracted using web crawling. This not only makes validation much easier but also helps in the weeding out process, thus reducing the possibilities of making mistakes. This can be partially automated by using intelligent data processing/visualisation tools on top the data.

3. Save time

Machines are much faster than humans. Employing web crawling to assist in the research processes in a venture capital firm can save the analysts a lot of time and effort. This time can be further invested in more productive activities like analytics, deep research and evaluation.

Source:-https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/web-crawling-for-venture-capital-firms

Six Tools to Make Data Scraping More Approachable

What is data scraping?

Data scraping is a technique in which a computer program/software extracts data from a website, so it can be used for other purposes.Scraping may sound a little intimidating, but with the help of scraping tools, the process can be a lot more approachable. The tools are used to capture data you need from specific web pages quicker and easier.

Let your computer do all the work

It takes only a few minutes for systems to recognize each others codes even in huge databases. Computers have their own language and that is why some of these tools make it easier to pull and format information in a way that is simpler for people to reuse.

Here is a list of some data scraping tools:

1.Diffbot

What makes this tool so likable is the business-friendly approach. Tools like Diffbot are perfect for searching through competitors work and the performance of your own webpage. Get product data from images, articles, discussions, web crawling tools and process websites. If you like how this sounds, see for yourself and sign up for their 14-day free trial.


2.Import.io

Import.io can help you easily get the information from the any source on the web. This tool can get your data in less than 30 seconds, depending on how complicated the data is and its structure in the website.  It can also be used for multiple URL scraping at once.

Here is one example: Which city of California based organizations try to hire the most through Linkedin? Check this list of jobs available in linkedin, download a csv file, sort from A to Z the cities and voila – San Francisco it is. Did you know that it’s for free?

3.Kimono

Kimono gives you easy access to APIs created for various web pages. No need to write any code or install any software to extract data. Simply paste the URL into the website or use a bookmark. Select how often you want the data to be collected and it saves it for you.

4.ScraperWiki

ScraperWiki gives you two choices – extract data from PDFs or build your own scraping tool in PHP, Ruby and Python language. It is meant for more experienced users and offers consulting (a paid service) if you need to learn some coding to get what you need. The first two PDF files are analyzed and reorganized for free, afterwards it’s a paid solution.

5.Grabz.it

Yes, Grabz.it does grab something. It takes information that is meaningful to you. The tool extracts data from the web, then converts videos into animated GIF that you can use on your website or application. This tool was made for those who code in ASP.NET, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby languages.

6.Python

If programming is the language you love the most, then use Python to build your own scraping tool and get the data from a page you want to explore. It is particularly useful if the other tools don’t recognize the data you need.

If you haven’t used this tool before, follow this playlist of videos to learn how to use Python for web scraping:

If you want more tools, look into the Common Crawl organization. It is made for those who are interested in the data crawling world. Need a more specific tool? DMOZ and KDnuggets have lists of other tools for web data mining.

All of these tools extract information in spreadsheet formats and that is why this webinar about how to work with data in Excel can help you understand more about what to do if you desire  to supply the world with unique and beautifully data visualizations.



Source Url:-https://infogr.am/blog/six-tools-to-make-data-scraping-more-approachable/

Why Customization is the Key Aspect of a Web Scraping Solution

Why Customization is the Key Aspect of a Web Scraping Solution

Every web data extraction requirement is unique when it comes to the technical complexity and setup process. This is one of the reasons why tools aren’t a viable solution for enterprise-grade data extraction from the web. When it comes to web scraping, there simply isn’t a solution that works perfectly out of the box. A lot of customization and tweaking goes into achieving a stable setup that can extract data from a target site on a continuous basis.

Customization web scraping service

This is why freedom of customization is one of the primary USPs of our web crawling solution. At PromptCloud, we go the extra mile to make data acquisition from the web a smooth and seamless experience for our client base that spans across industries and geographies. Customization options are important for any web data extraction project; Find out how we handle it.

The QA process

The QA process consists of multiple manual and automated layers to ensure only high-quality data is passed on to our clients. Once the crawlers are programmed by the technical team, the crawler code is peer reviewed to make sure that the optimal approach is used for extraction and to ensure there are no inherent issues with the code. If the crawler setup is deemed to be stable, it’s deployed on our dedicated servers.

The next part of manual QA is done once the data starts flowing in. The extracted data is inspected by our quality inspection team to make sure that it’s as expected. If issues are found, the crawler setup is tweaked to weed out the detected issues. Once the issues are fixed, the crawler setup is finalized. This manual layer of QA is followed by automated mechanisms that will monitor the crawls throughout the recurring extraction, hereafter.

Customization of the crawler

As we previously mentioned, customization options are extremely important for building high quality data feeds via web scraping. This is also one of the key differences between a dedicated web scraping service and a DIY tool. While DIY tools generally don’t have the mechanism to accurately handle dynamic and complex websites, a dedicated data extraction service can provide high level customization options. Here are some example scenarios where only a customizable solution can help you.

File download

Sometimes, the web scraping requirement would demand downloading of PDF files or images from the target sites. Downloading files would require a bit more than a regular web scraping setup. To handle this, we add an extra layer of setup along with the crawler which will download the required files to a local or cloud storage by fetching the file URLs from the target webpage. The speed and efficiency of the whole setup should be top notch for file downloads to work smoothly.

Resize images

If you want to extract product images from an Ecommerce portal, the file download customization on top of a regular web scraping setup should work. However, high resolution images can easily hog your storage space. In such cases, we can resize all the images being extracted programmatically in order to save you the cost of data storage. This scenario requires a very flexible crawling setup, which is something that can only be provided by a dedicated service provider.

Extracting key information from text

Sometimes, the data you need from a website might be mixed with other text. For example, let’s say you need only the ZIP codes extracted from a website where the ZIP code itself doesn’t have a dedicated field but is a part of the address text. This wouldn’t be normally possible unless you write a program to be introduced into the web scraping pipeline that can intelligently identify and separate the required data from the rest.
Extracting data points from site flow even if it’s missing in the final page

Sometimes, not all the data points that you need might be available on the same page. This is handled by extracting the data from multiple pages and merging the records together. This again requires a customizable framework to deliver data accurately.

Automating the QA process for frequently updated websites

Some websites get updated more of than others. This is nothing new; however, if the sites in your target list get updated at a very high frequency, the QA process could get time-consuming at your end. To cater to such a requirement, the scraping setup should run crawls at a very high frequency. Apart from this, once new records are added, the data should be run through a deduplication system to weed out the possibility of duplicate entries in the data. We can completely automate this process of quality inspection for frequently updated websites.

Source:https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/customization-is-the-key-aspect-of-web-scraping-solution

Data Extraction/ Web Scraping Services

Making an informed business decision requires extracting, harvesting and exploiting information from diverse sources. Data extraction or web scraping (also known as web harvesting) is the process of mining information from websites using software, substantiated with human intelligence. The content 'scraped' from web sources using algorithms is stored in a structured format, so that it can be manually analyzed later.

Case in Point: How do price comparison websites acquire their pricing data? It is mostly by 'scraping' the information from online retailer websites.

We offers data extraction / web scraping services for retrieving data for advanced data processing or archiving from a variety of online sources and medium. Nonetheless, data extraction is a time consuming process, and if not conducted meticulously, it can result in loads of errors. A leading web scraping company, we can deliver required information within a short turnaround time, employing an extensive array of online sources.

Our Process Of Data Extraction/ Web Scraping, Involves:

- Capturing relevant data from the web, which is raw and unstructured
- Reviewing and refining the obtained data sets
- Formatting the data, consistent with the requirements of the client
- Organizing website and email lists, and contact details in an excel sheet
- Collating and summarizing the information, if required

Our professionals are adept at extracting data pertaining to your competition, their pricing strategy, gathering information about various product launches, their new and innovative features, etc., for enterprises, market research companies or price comparison websites through professional market research and subject matter blogs.

Our key Services in Web Scraping/ Database Extraction include:

We offer a comprehensive range of data extraction and scraping services right from Screen Scraping, Webpage / HTML Page Scraping, Semantic / Syntactic Scraping, Email Scraping to Database Extraction, PDF Data Extraction Services, etc.

- Extracting meta data from websites, blogs, and forums, etc.
- Data scraping from social media sites
- Data quarrying for online news and media sites from different online news and PR sources
- Data scraping from business directories and portals
- Data scraping pertaining to legal / medical / academic research
- Data scraping from real estate, hotels & restaurant, financial websites, etc.

Contact us to outsource your Data Scraping / Web Extraction Services or to-  learn more about our other data related services.

Source Url :-http://www.data-entry-india.com/data-extraction-web-scraping-services.html

How Easily Can You Extract Data From Web

With tech advancements taking the entire world by a storm, every sector is undergoing massive transformations. As far as the business arena is concerned, the rise of big data and data analytics is playing a crucial part in operations. Big data and data analysis is the best way to identify customer interests. Businesses can gain crystal clear insights into consumers’ preferences, choices, and purchase behaviours, and that’s what leads to unmatched business success. So, it’s here that we come across a crucial question. How do enterprises and organisations leverage data to gain crucial insights into consumer preferences? Well, data extraction and mining are the two significant processes in this context. Let’s take a look at what data extraction means as a process.

Decoding data extraction
Businesses across the globe are trying their best to retrieve crucial data. But, what is it that’s helping them do that? It’s here that the concept of data extraction comes into the picture. Let’s begin with a functional definition of this concept. According to formal definitions, ‘data extraction’ refers to the retrieval of crucial information through crawling and indexing. The sources of this extraction are mostly poorly-structured or unstructured data sets. Data extraction can prove to be highly beneficial if done in the right way. With the increasing shift towards online operations, extracting data from the web has become highly important.

The emergence of ‘scraping’
The act of information or data retrieval gets a unique name, and that’s what we call ‘data scraping.’ You might have already decided to pull data from 3rd party websites. If that’s what it is, then it’s high time to embark on the project. Most of the extractors will begin by checking the presence of APIs. However, they might be unaware of a crucial and unique option in this context.

Automatic data support
Every website lends virtual support to a structured data source, and that too by default. You can pull out or retrieve highly relevant data directly from the HTML. The process is termed as ‘web scraping’ and can ensure numerous benefits for you. Let’s check out how web scraping is useful and awesome.

Any content you view is ready for scraping
All of us download various stuff throughout the day. Whether it is music, important documents or images, downloads seem to be regular affairs. When you are successful in downloading any particular content of a page, it means the website offers unrestricted access to your browser. It won’t take long for you to understand that the content is programmatically accessible too. On that note, it’s high time to work out effective reasons that define the importance of web scraping. Before opting for RSS feeds, APIs, or other conventional data extraction methods, you should assess the benefits of web scraping. Here’s what you need to know in this context.

Website vs. APIs: Who’s the winner?
Site owners are more concerned about their public-facing or official websites than the structured data feeds. APIs can change, and feeds can shift without prior notifications. The breakdown of Twitter’s developer ecosystem is a crucial example for this.

So, what are the reasons for this downfall?
At times, these errors are deliberate. However, the crucial reasons are something else. Most of the enterprises are completely unaware of their structured data and information. Even if the data gets damaged, altered, or mangled, there’s no one to care about it.
However, that isn’t what happens with the website. When an official website stops functioning or delivers poor performance, the consequences are direct and in-your-face. Quite naturally, developers and site owners decide to fix it almost instantaneously.

Zero-rate limiting
Rate-limiting doesn’t exist for public websites. Although it’s imperative to build defences against access automation, most of the enterprises don’t care to do that. It’s only done if there are captchas on signups. If you aren’t making repeated requests, there are no possibilities of you being considered as a DDOS attack.

In-your-face data
Web scraping is perhaps the best way to gain access to crucial data. The desired data sets are already there, and you won’t have to rely on APIs or other data sources for gaining access. All you need to do is browse the site and find out the most appropriate data. Identifying and figuring out the basic data patterns will help you to a great extent.
Unknown and Anonymous access

You might want to gather information or collect data secretly. Simply put, you might wish to keep the entire process highly confidential. APIs will demand registrations and give you a key, which is the most important part of sending requests. With HTTP requests, you can stay secure and keep the process confidential, as the only aspects exposed are your site cookies and IP address. These are some of the reasons explaining the benefits of web scraping. Once you are through with these points, it’s high time to master the art of scraping.
Getting started with data extraction

If you are already eager to grab data, it’s high time you work on the blueprints for the project. Surprised? Well, data scraping or rather web data scraping requires in-depth analysis along with a bit of upfront work. While documentations are available with APIs, that’s not the case with HTTP requests. Be patient and innovative, as that will help you throughout the project.

2. Data fetching

Begin the process by looking for the URL and knowing the endpoints. Here are some of the pointers worth considering:
- Organized information: You must have an idea of the kind of information you want. If you wish to have it in an organized manner, rely on the navigation offered by the site. Track the changes in the site URL while you click through sections and sub-sections.
- Search functionality: Websites with search functionality will make your job easier than ever. You can keep on typing some of the useful terms or keywords based on your search. While doing so, keep track of URL changes.
- Removing unnecessary parameters: When it comes to looking for crucial information, the GET parameter plays a vital role. Try looking for unnecessary and undesired GET parameters in the URL, and removing them from the URL. Keep the ones that’ll help you load the data.
2. Pagination comes next

While looking for data, you might have to scroll down and move to subsequent pages. Once you click to Page 2, ‘offset=parameter’ gets added to the selected URL. Now, what is this function all about? The ‘offset=parameter’ function can represent either the number of features on the page or the page-numbering itself. The function will help you perform multiple iterations until you attain the “end of data” status.

Trying out AJAX
Most of the people nurture certain misconceptions about data scraping. While they think that AJAX makes their job tougher than ever, it’s actually the opposite. Sites utilising AJAX for data-loading ensures smooth data scraping. The time isn’t far away when AJAX will return along with JavaScript. Pulling up the ‘Network’ tab in Firebug or Web Inspector will be the best thing to do in this context. With these tips in mind, you will have the opportunity to get crucial data or information from the server. You need to extract the information and get it out of the page markup, which is the most difficult or tricky part of the process.

Unstructured data issues
When it comes to dealing with unstructured data, you will need to keep certain crucial aspects in mind. As stated earlier, pulling out the data from page markups is a highly critical task. Here’s how you can do it:
1. Utilising the CSS hooks
According to numerous web designers, the CSS hooks happen to be the best resources for puling data. Since it doesn’t involve numerous classes, CSS hooks offer straightforward data scraping.
2. Good HTML Parsing
Having a good HTML library will help you in ways more than one. With the help of a functional and dynamic HTML parsing library, you can create several iterations as and when you wish to.

Knowing the loopholes
Web scraping won’t be an easy affair. However, it won’t be a hard nut to crack either. While knowing the crucial web scraping tips is necessary, it’s also imperative to get an idea of the traps. If you have been thinking about it, we have something for you!
- Login contents: Contents that require you to login might prove to be potential traps. It reveals your identity and wreaks havoc on your project’s confidentiality.
- Rate limiting: Rate limiting can affect your scraping needs both positively and negatively, and that entirely depends on the application you are working on.
Parting thoughts

Extracting data the right way will be critical to the success of your business venture. With traditional data extraction methods failing to offer desired experiences, web designers and developers are embracing web scraping services. With these essential tips and tricks, you will surely gain data insights with perfect web scraping.

Source Url:- https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/how-easy-is-data-extraction