Is Web Scraping Legal? Myths You Need to Know About Web Scraping

Introduction

Web scraping has become very popular so we have to make things straight. After a bit of research online, you will find some myths that are very common about data scraping. In case, you are completely new to web scraping or you think about leveraging data scraping then you should know about these myths. Let’s discuss the web scraping myths you need to know:

Myth 1: Web Scraping is Illegal

Reality: Beginning with the largest myth about web scraping, is web scraping legal? Well, yes, it is legal unless you perform it illegally. Web scraping is just like any other available tool. You may use that for good work as well as you may use that for bad work! Web scraping is not illegal by any means. Web crawling or web scraping were historically related to renowned search engines like Bing or Google. The search engines scrape websites as well as index the web. As search engines create trust as well as brought back visibility and traffic to the websites they scrape, their bots have made a promising view towards data scraping. This is regarding how you scrape as well as what you perform with the required data.

Myth 2: You Should Know Coding

Reality: Some people believe that you require to be a professional programmer for scraping web data. Although, there are many software solutions available like RetailGators which make that easier and you don’t need to write the code. Also, remember that scraping the websites without any coding is wonderful, however, it’s not appropriate in numerous cases. In case, you need to process data (deduplication, cleaning, etc.) a data scraping software can’t assist you.

Myth 3: Web Scraping is Inexpensive

Reality: The majority of businesses don’t wish to do scraping themselves. This is quite common that they appoint a company that offers web scraping services or a freelancer. Now, the myth is that web scraping is inexpensive concerning the ROI it offers in the majority of cases. However, this is not true. Hiring a professional web scraping company will cost you huge! If you perform research about how much various freelancers or vendors charge for different web scraping services then you will get a big difference! That’s because some freelancers and companies with higher rates offer superior services.

Myth 4: A Web Scraper Always Works for You

Reality: While creating a scraper, we wish to work effortlessly forever as well as deliver the required data. However, it’s not easy at all! The biggest task in scraping is that sites are continuously changing. It is the nature of the present situation of the internet. So, we should adjust the scraper accordingly so that it can deliver dependable and updated data. So, if you use a freelancer’s service then it will become hectic for you when the data scraper wrecks as you have to find another freelancer for making it workable again or hire the previous freelancer again.

Myth 5: Web Scraping Means Choosing Data from HTML

Reality: Reality: This myth is often discussed by programmers that have never created a real web scraper. Certainly, web scraping is about fetching data from the website however, what matters is that how you use that data for driving your business. Data scraping is so much more than fetching raw data from a website. Web scraping involves cleaning disorganized data, deduplication, and all types of filtering, system integration, visualization, and analytics. It’s difficult. You can say that you just need raw data however, there are chances that you lose a huge amount of value by not processing data further.

Myth 6: You Can Scrape Any Website

Reality: Reality: Website owners could make it very hard for the bots to extract data. There are many ways of making a site scraping-proof. Though in reality, no technical shields are there which might stop a complete-fledged scraper to fetch data. In case, the website is having many captchas, scraper traps, as well as other layers for defending against bots then certainly web scraping won’t work there. You have to think twice before scraping that website. Theoretically, it’s possible to cope with all kinds of bot shields, however, do you want to? If a website proactively shields against the scrapers then you should not scrape them.

Conclusion

Web data scraping has assisted us in making the finest use of the web using search engines like Bing and Google. It is a very powerful tool that helps businesses in leveraging the data online, however should be respectfully done.

source code: https://www.retailgators.com/is-web-scraping-legal-myths-you-need-to-know-about-web-scraping.php