Top 3 Web Data Scrapers For Beginners

“As a beginner, I built a web data scraper and successfully extracted 20,000 data points from Amazon’s website.”

Interested in creating your own chrome scraper and building a valuable database at no cost? It’s easier than you think once you learn the right tools and methods. This article will guide you through three different ways to build a scraper, both coding and no code, step by step.

Before diving into the steps, you’ll get an overview of what a chrome scraper is and how it can benefit you.

What Is A Chrome Scraper

A Chrome scraper is an automated preset bot that navigates to the destination links as requested and collects the targeted information, including text, images, and videos on Chrome. And then export all the stored information into a structured form such as CSV and Excel.

You might be wondering if using a chrome scraper is legal. The answer is: it depends. Generally speaking, crawling public data on Chrome is completely legal in most countries.

Why Do You Need A Chrome Scraper

Imagine a world without Chrome. How long would it take to find a recipe for chicken nuggets online? With 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day, searching without a tool like Chrome would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. The search engine itself has tons of scrapers. They help index all the new information and arrange them to the proper place for a better search experience. While for a Chrome scraper, it can help us more than just search and locate the targeted information but download it for further exploration:

1. Content Aggregation: A Chrome scraper can compile information on niche subjects from various sources into one platform. It’s essential for collecting timely data from popular websites to keep your platform updated.
2. Sentiment Analysis: Also known as opinion mining, this process analyzes public attitudes toward a product or service. Accurate sentiment analysis requires consistent data and a Chrome scraper can extract tweets, reviews, and comments for this purpose.
3. Lead Generation: Every business needs sales leads to thrive. If you’re planning a marketing campaign targeting a specific industry, a Chrome scraper can scrape emails, phone numbers, and public profiles from trade fair attendee lists, such as attendees of the 2018 Legal Recruiting Summit.

Without further ado, let’s reveal how we can get the scraper.

Method 1: Choose a Preset Template Online Scraper

If you want to quickly crawl data from a specific site, using a preset data scraping template is an excellent option. These templates are designed for popular websites and can be used directly from the web page, meaning you don’t need to download any software. They’re very beginner-friendly, requiring only a few parameters to start crawling data.

Example: Amazon Product Data Scraping Template

1. Select the Template: Choose the Amazon product data scraping template from the list of available templates.
2. Enter Parameters: Input the necessary parameters, such as the product category or specific search keywords.
3. Start Crawling: Click the start button to begin the data extraction process. The template will automatically crawl the specified data and provide it in a structured format.

Method 2: No Coding Drag And Drop Scraper Tool

If you want to customize your scraper, you can use the web scraping tool available on the market. For example, Octoparse offers an auto-detecting mode, allowing you to crawl data from a website almost automatically. You can also customize the crawling workflow by dragging and dropping elements.

3 Steps to Build a Chrome Scraper Without Coding

Step 1: Download Octoparse and Copy a Web Page Link

• Download and install Octoparse on your device. Paste the target webpage URL into the main panel. Octoparse will automatically detect the webpage to build a scraper workflow, or you can select “Advanced Mode” for more customization options.

Step 2: Customize the Scraper Data Fields

• Preview the data detected by Octoparse, and click the “Create workflow” button to set up the scraper. Customize the data fields by clicking the target data positions. Octoparse also supports pagination, allowing the scraper to navigate through multiple pages by clicking the “Next Page” button.

Step 3: Run the Chrome Scraper to Extract Data and Export into Excel Files

• After setting up the extraction fields, click the “Run” button to execute the scraper. You can then download the data to your local device in Excel or CSV format.

Method 3: Build a Chrome scraper with a Coding Script

Writing scripts with computer languages is predominantly used by programmers. It can be as powerful as you create it to be. Here’s an example of a snippet of bot code.

3 Steps to Create a Chrome scraper Using Python

Step 1: Send an HTTP Request

• Start by sending an HTTP request to the URL of the webpage you want to crawl. The server responds to your request by returning the content of the web page. This content usually includes the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code that defines the structure and styling of the page.
• Example Code:

import requests
url = 'https://example.com'
response = requests.get(url)
webpage_content = response.content

Step 2: Parse the Webpage

• Next, parse the webpage content. This involves converting the HTML into a tree structure, where each node represents an element (like a tag) in the HTML document. This structure helps the bot navigate through the webpage and find the desired information.
• To parse HTML in Python, you can use libraries like BeautifulSoup.
• Example Code:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

soup = BeautifulSoup(webpage_content, 'html.parser')

Step 3: Search the Parse Tree

• Use the Python library to search through the parse tree and extract the data you need. You can search for elements by their tags, classes, ids, or other attributes.
• Example Code:

# Find all links on the page
links = soup.find_all('a')
for link in links:
    print(link.get('href'))

Among the programming languages used for web crawling, Python is easier to implement compared to PHP and Java. It offers powerful libraries like BeautifulSoup, Scrapy, and Selenium, which simplify the process of building web scrapers. However, it still has a steep learning curve that prevents many non-tech professionals from using it. While writing your own scraper is a cost-effective solution, it may not be sustainable due to the extended learning cycle within a limited timeframe.

Conclusion

Writing scripts can be challenging due to the high initial and maintenance costs. No two web pages are identical, so you need to write a script for each site you want to crawl. This approach is unsustainable if you need to crawl many different websites. Additionally, websites often change their layouts and structures over time, requiring you to debug and adjust your scraper accordingly.

Using web scraping tools like Octoparse or preset templates like online scraper is more practical for beginners and involves less effort. These tools and templates simplify the process, making it easier to extract data without needing to write or maintain complex scripts.