Scraping the Monster Job Site. In this tutorial, you’ll build a web scraper that fetches Software Developer job listings from the Monster job aggregator site. Your web scraper will parse the HTML to pick out the relevant pieces of information and filter that content for specific words. For example, Selenium is a portable framework that allows you to automate the functionalities of web browsers using a wide range of programming languages. Whereas it’s primarily used for testing web applications automatically, it can also be used for extracting online data. In this post, we'll take a look at.
So you just discovered web scraping and you’re excited to get started on your first web scraping project.
But sometimes, it’s hard to get your creative juices going and come up with an idea for your first project.
Today, we will propose a couple of ideas that can get you started with web scraping.
What is Web Scraping?
Before we get started, you might be wondering what web scraping is in the first place. In short, web scraping refers to the extraction of data from a website on to a more useful format.
In most cases, web scraping is done with an automated software tool rather than manually. If you’d like to learn more about web scraping, check our in-depth guide on web scraping and what it used for.
Web Scraping Ideas
We have put together 5 different ideas for you to start your first web scraping project.
We have built some of these examples to also allow you to realize the power of web scraping with further analysis.
Taking Price Comparison to the Next Level
One project a lot of people like to start with involves scraping ecommerce sites for product data and price comparison. While this project is a good place to get started, we suggest you take it to the next level and analyze the data from your scrape to find the best purchase in a certain category.
For example, you could scrape data about all tablets available on Amazon and analyze the dataset to figure out what is the best bang for your buck when comparing both pricing and review score data. You can make this analysis more detailed by filtering out products with a low amount of reviews.
You’d be looking to answer the question: What is the best rated tablet you can purchase for the lowest amount?
Ready to get started? Here’s our guide on how to scrape Amazon product data.
Build a Simple Investment App (No Coding)
This might project might sound a bit intimidating. However, building a simple investment app is easier than you’d think.
The goal of this app would be to setup your web scraper to scrape a few specific stocks from Yahoo Finance every day. This scrape will then be fed into a Google Spreadsheet and once any stock drops under a specific price, a “buy” notification will be sent to your email.
You can start this project by checking out the following quick guides:
Scrape a Subreddit to Find Popular Topics and Words
If you’re like me, you might have a few subreddits that you love to browse.
Do you sometimes wonder if there are specific words or topics that get more upvotes than others within that community? Or which topics get more comments and create more discussion?
You could scrape this subreddit and create graphs such as word-clouds to present the insights you’ve found.
You could then take these graphs and insights from your project and share them with that specific subreddit to spark further conversations (and get some sweet reddit karma!).
Interested in this project? Check out our guide on how to scrape reddit data.
Scrape a Leads Database for Someone Else (or sell it!)
You might know someone in your family or circle of friends who runs their own business. Why not help them by building a database of leads for their business?
Web Scraping Script Examples
First, you’d have to ask them about the details of their business and what kind of leads they would find valuable. After this, you can setup your web scraper to scrape leads data from the internet to build your database.
If you do not know anyone in your circle that might need a leads database, you could also try to sell it!
Want to complete this project? Here’s our guide on how to use a web scraping for lead generation.
Take on a Real Web Scraping Job
Why not get started with a real-world example of a web scraping job?
Numerous one-off web scraping jobs get posted on job boards every day. These are great to get started with, since they are examples of what web scraping is being used for in the real world.
A great place to start is UpWork, where you can search for “web scraping” jobs and apply to take them up or just complete them regardless for learning purposes.
Here’s the search results page for “web scraping” in UpWork.
Js Web Scraping Examples
What Web Scraper Should You Use?
At this point, you might already know what your first web scraping project will be.
However, you might still be wondering what web scraper you should be using to carry out your project. The truth is that the best web scraper for your project might be different depending on the needs of your project.
However, every single project on this list can be completed using ParseHub, a powerful and free web scraper.
What web scraping project will you tackle first?
Web scraping can be incredibly powerful. So much so, that many businesses use web scraping technologies to fuel their operations.
After all, having access to the right data can provide powerful insights about an industry or competitor.
Today, we will review some common uses of web scraping by companies in many different sectors.
What is Web Scraping?
If you are wondering what web scraping is in the first place, let us break it down.
Web scraping refers to the extraction of web data on to a format that is more useful for the user. For example, you might scrape product information from an ecommerce website onto an excel spreadsheet.
Although web scraping can be done manually, in most cases, you might be better off using an automated tool. After all, these are usually faster and less expensive than scraping data manually.
Want to learn more about web scraping? Learn more by reading our in-depth guide on web scraping.
Web Scraping Examples: Business Uses
Real Estate Listing Scraping
Many real estate agents use web scraping to populate their database of available properties for sale or for rent.
For example, a real estate agency will scrape MLS listings to build and API that directly populate this information onto their website. This way, they get to act as the agent for the property when someone finds this listing on their site.
Most listings that you will find on a Real Estate website are automatically generated by an API.
Industry Statistics and Insights
Many companies use web scraping to build massive databases and draw industry-specific insights from these. These companies can then sell access to these insights to companies in said industries.
For example, a company might scrape and analyze tons of data about oil prices, exports and imports in order to sell their insights to oil companies across the world.
A notable example of the value that can be unlocked from this use is the one of HiQ Labs.
This company was caught scraping public data from LinkedIn, which resulted in them getting banned from scraping LinkedIn data. However, the courts have upheld HiQ’s argument that scraping publicly available data is not illegal.
Comparison Shopping Sites
There are several websites and applications that can help you to easily compare pricing between several retailers for the same product.
One way that these websites work is by using web scrapers to scrape product data and pricing from each retailer on a daily basis. This way, they can provide their users with the comparison data they need.
Lead Generation
One incredibly popular use of web scraping is lead generation. This use is so popular in fact, that we have written an entire guide on using web scraping for lead generation.
In short, web scraping is used by many companies to collect contact information about potential customers or clients. This is incredibly common in the business-to-business space, where potential customers will post their business information publicly online.
Website Transitions
Sometimes, companies with incredibly large websites are tasked with having to transition their site to a more modern environment. Think of large and outdated websites that hold a lot of critical information (such as most government websites).
In these cases, companies might want to use a web scraper to quickly and easily export data from their legacy website on to their new platform.
Social Media Sentiment Analysis
We don’t mean to freak you out, but if you ever tweeted during a Game of Thrones episodes, your tweet might have been scraped and analyzed by HBO to understand how their show is being received on social media.
Many different social media platforms can be scraped for further sentiment analysis about specific topics. Not only is this useful for many companies, but also for individuals such as politicians. They can use this type of analysis to understand the perception of their campaigns on social media.
Closing Thoughts
As you might already realize, there are many ways in which web scraping can be used. In fact, the uses we have highlighted are just the tip of the iceberg.
If you’re wondering what’s the best web scraper four your next project, read our guide on what makes the best web scraper.
What will you use web scraping for?