Is Scrapestorm Safe
ScrapeStorm Reviews 2021 – Capterra
StudentEducation Management, 10, 001+ employeesUsed the software for: I used a free trial“Easy to use software”Overall: It is pretty straightforward in terms of the use of the software and I was able to extract data that I want. Pros: I like the ScrapeStorm since it is easy to use for a student like me that does not know much about programming stuff to scrape information. It is user friendly and there are tutorials that guide me on how to operate the software. Cons: Sometimes the extracted file does not contain any information so I need to double check the process to get the information I need. Mathew W. OwnerConsumer Electronics, Self-employedUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“Amazing Tool”Overall: So far I am extremely impressed. My first impression was that it’s just another scrape tool but I am extremely impressed I no longer have to manually get product details (like compatible printer models for our ink cartridges for example) which took 6-9 months to do! I am extremely It scraped my supplier’s products, including product name, price, even information that you could only get after clicking the link it added it to the excel spreadsheet wonderfully. I used a free tool which only collected maybe 1 fifth of the products and looking back if I would have found ScrapeStorm sooner it would have saved and actually generated my company much more orders since there were so many missing products and The boost feature is only in higher plans as well as the fact that there’s no plans for someone who only does online inventory maybe once every few months. I would have loved a higher priced premium plan but I’m not going to pay double or triple the base plan fee just to use it for a couple days a asons for Switching to ScrapeStorm: I only got the page details like product picture, name, and price. I also needed internal details which were compatible printer models for each ink cartridge. They sent me information literally 2+ months after I already ended up doing everything manually. Not to mention their steps did not work and was not user friendly for adding X PATH which did not work to get the required details MerchandiserRetail, 11-50 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“Stability is very important”Pros: This software is really great in terms of data extraction. I need to extract a lot of product data from Amazon, and I can extract it as soon as I set the field. And I can very much be satisfied with the ability to export data to a This software also has a lot of bugs. First of all, it is very unstable. Sometimes the same settings can’t extract data, and there will be a lot of problems when you log in to another computer. I hope these problems can be solved as soon as esidentInsurance, 1-10 employeesUsed the software for: I used a free trial“Huge Fan! ”Overall: I am looking forward to continuing to use this program and try the premium versionPros: What I liked most is the ease of it all. It is able to scrape the web perfectly and pick up on all the portions of the webpage automatically that need to be scraped. I tried a bunch of different products and this is by far the best You cannot use the full features during a ternatives Considered: OctoparseReasons for Choosing ScrapeStorm: It scraped a website that the other could aduate StudentResearch, Self-employedUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“The Premium Plan is the Best Option Available”Overall: I’m using ScrapeStorm in combination with RStudio to create dataframes. This process is quite seamless when using formats and is quite easy to integrate and use as a regular data set under ordinary circumstances. Generally, I thought ScrapeStorm was a good product with a fair price, even if it was clunky on occasion. Pros: ScrapeStorm is able to autodetect fields and scrape them in simply. Additionally, you may edit these yourself to target specific JSON and other detailed information if it does not.
The full array of export options was useful.
It has a friendly user interface.
The option to add an excel sheet full of URLs you need scraped was very useful. If they all match the same format, the product has no problem applying your flowchart/automated scrape through multiple URLs.
Cons: When dealing with websites with large amounts of data, the UI can appear unresponsive. This has fooled me into thinking the data wouldn’t scrape/the program was frozen, but it was just trying to detect fields and place the objects in the correct columns. This was irritating.
The data I was scraping cut out at one point. I’m not sure if this is because my connection to the website I was scraping was blocked (which IP rotation is meant to solve) or if the program really thought it was finished scraping. This caused me to lose 120 URLs out of 375 in a comparative context, which almost ruined my project had I not caught this discrepancy and re-done the scrape. For an ordinary user below of Premium plan, which includes unlimited scrapes (>50, 000), this may be concerning as you can’t really tell if your scrape is exactly what you want unless you stop the process and double check manually. Julie AnalystConsumer Goods, 51-200 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“Scrapestorm Works Smarter Not Harder”Overall: Scrapestorm has helped our business scrape publicly available information on social media platforms, media outlets, and product pages. It has saved us all the time and energy it would take to do that exercise manually! Pros: to grab sections off a web page when setting up the scraping task
2. Special value offerings in the data set like the scrape timestamp and data rank
3. Easy to track the scraping task once it’s started
4. Data deduplication feature
5. Many export options with the ability to track which data points you’ve already exported for optimal organization
6. Love the “image may contain” feature to help categorize qualitative data like images
7. Easy to automate tasks Cons: The only issue I’ve experienced is that sometime the automatic export to SQL Server can stall out with larger data rketing AssociateConsumer Electronics, 11-50 employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months“Looking forward to new features”Pros: Of course, this is a great piece of software. I tried a lot of data extraction software, this is the easiest software I have ever used. The new acceleration feature has greatly increased the speed of my data collection, especially when collecting list pages. I look forward to ScrapeStorm’s new and powerful When collecting, sometimes it will stop after collecting two pages, which may be a problem with the dependent Finance and Marketing ConsultantMarketing and Advertising, Self-employedUsed the software for: I used a free trial“Great free tool for SEO to scrap links, titles and description combined with Python Pandas and NLTK”Overall: With Scrape Storm I will save with web scrap programming time to collect e-commerce product information for SEO competition and conversions improvement analysis purpose. Pros: I tested free software I it is great tool to collect for free without programming data of full text descriptions and analyze further with data frames and Natural Language Tool Kit technologies and group words Some bugs, I think manuals of how test sites and select trial options would be underWriting and Editing, 1-10 employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years“Very useful and capable tool that is flexible and relatively easy to use”Overall: So far, very happy with itPros: It’s fast to start scraping
It’s flexible and can manage various tasks on many websites
It’s clean
It’s reliable
Cons: It can be sometimes a bit confusing when you start more complex scraping actions
Takes a few trials before really understanding the softwareStudentResearch, 501-1000 employeesUsed the software for: I used a free trial“Simple scraping”Overall: Great product for researchers. And student discounts available! Pros: – Scraping of Facebook pages made easy
– Both automated and customizable
– Fast to scrape and easy to export resultsCons: – Sometimes the automated detection of page features needs to be tweaked manuallyCharl S. TeacherEducation Management, 11-50 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“The software I have always wanted to find! ”Overall: This is a fast-growing software, I would love to see its progress, and I recommend you try it. I believe it will give you a good I just started using this software for a month. During the process, I found that this is really a very powerful software. Its smart mode can scrape a variety of different types of websites, and it is easy to use. As long as I have seen a few tutorials, I will understand the whole process. But I prefer to use the advanced mode. Although it is a bit more complicated, but it is more powerful, it is very helpful for my academic research. I also recommend my students to try it. And I will continue to use the paid Of course, there are still some problems when using it. For example, sometimes the response is slow, and a few websites are not supported. But it is updated very quickly, the technicians will quickly find bugs and fix them. I believe that this software will be more mature after a formation Asst. ManagerInformation Services, 501-1000 employeesUsed the software for: I used a free trial“Better Than Smillar Products. It really works”Overall: I am a coordinator of a data center and we scrape lots of information from websites. We have tested more than 15 web-based and desktop scrapper according to my idea ScrapeStorm more successful than other well-known Easy to use, the software detects pagers, links, Info Columns, correctly. So you can scrape List and Detail pages easily. Also has auto scroll, programmable actions on the page. So you can get the result of an advance search. Additionally, I like desktop scrappers, I want to see my scrape results in my pc. Thus, You can compare expected results and scraped results. Because of that, I do not like to use web-based online scrappers. Cons: I hope they can give another payment option rather than AssistantEducation Management, 5001-10, 000 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“ScrapeStorm – The workhorse for Web Scrapping”Overall: I am using it for web scrapping in order to derive samples which I can use for statistical analysis. It’s a great tool for academia. In the future I will also use it for the analysis of blogs It is a really user-friendly software with a graphical interface. This means it can be used by novices and experts as well. The functions it provides are on point and compared to other software tools, this is way better. The user interface is great. I have been looking for other tools as well but haven’t found anything comparable. I am a researcher and I would definitely recommend this tool to my colleagues for any web scrapping related tools – especially since EVERYONE can use Nothing to complain about. In case you want to take full advantage, please be sure to buy the full package. Otherwise pay attention to your stomer Service AdvisorInternet, 1001-5000 employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months“It would be better if you could name the image. ”Pros: I can’t believe how fast ScrapeStorm is when collecting list pages. I used it to get a lot of data quickly, so I can analyze the data as soon as possible. Moreover, it can also download pictures directly, not just links to pictures, so I like it very much. It would be better if you could name the picture. Look forward to it! Cons: I found that when you need scrape into, the acceleration function will look like it doesn’t work. Sometimes it won’t even collect. I don’t know thalie c. Undergraduate StudentResearch, Self-employedUsed the software for: I used a free trial“Efficient and reliable time-saver! ”Overall: I’ve been using ScrapeStorm in collecting social media data for my undergraduate dissertation. It has saved me hours upon hours of trawling through posts, instead providing reliable and easy to use tool. Pros: – Excellent and very easy to understand interface
– Fast and supportive customer service response.
– Generous trial package, with excellent student discount offers.
– Highly customisable to each project
– Huge timesaver in data collection!
Cons: – Steep learning curve, however there are many helpful tutorial videos available Hoz Internet, 51-200 employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months“I like the function of ScrapeStorm to automatically save to the cloud”Overall: After being proficient in these functions, it will be a very good This software supports cloud auto-save tasks. This feature is very useful, I like it very much. This makes me not afraid to lose the task in the middle, and guarantee the efficiency of my Some websites do not fully recognize the data, some fields cannot be selected, but there are very ristopher search AssistantResearch, 201-500 employeesUsed the software for: I used a free trial“Easy to use”Pros: It is super easy to scrape data using ScrapeStorm. It took me literally 10 seconds to scrape a whole thread from a forum for further anaylsis without defining any variables or pagination etc. It just works out of the box, which is very impressive… Also export of the data is super easy… Cons: It’s a pity that there is only the option for a subscription… I would love to pay a high one time fee and use the software independently and without the cloud hammed Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“Best Scraper Overall”Pros: I have tried almost all scrapers available in the market for non coders and scrape storm has nailed in reliability and ease of use.
It can identify objects very precisely unlike Octaparse in which you have trouble fetching data if page structure changes even a little bit.
The best interactive scraper which is stable
Two important functions of making logical decision making
Enter command, which is not available in any scraper
Smart mode, also only offered in one other scraper but is extremely expensive to deploy
Increase speed of scraping. Cons: Doesnt offer payment option excep paypal or paypal affiliated credit card.
Reasons for Switching to ScrapeStorm: Ease of useInsurance, 51-200 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“Very reliable data scrapping tool”Overall: Its a great tool for data scrapping and is highly Its very easy to use, it works very smoothly also the data can be scrapped from variety of websites such as Group On, Yelp, LinkedIn. The data scrapped is highly accurate and to the point. We can customize the fields according to our needs. We can export data in different forms such as Csv, text file and excel sheet which comes very handy while importing data using different applications like Microsoft excel or google Only 100 fields of data can be scrapped per day in free version which limits our ability to import more data. Sometimes it shows error while scrapping data from certain websites which needs to be Degree StudentMarket Research, 501-1000 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“Useful also for who have never code”Pros: The software is very useful to use even for who have never code, like me. Indeed, every time you create a new field, you can give the input data selecting directly whatever you prefer in the browser. So, you can view instantly if you are extracting the right field, because the working view is divided in two part: up the browser, down the columns with the field that you added.
It is also good that you can scrape in a single field and the software merge automatically the main page data with the second page Even if it is intuitive, I would like to see more examples and video udentResearch, Self-employedUsed the software for: I used a free trial“Great product! Time and life saver! ”Overall: I needed to scrape alot of posts from social media for my research project. Scrapestorm streamlined the whole process and save me many hours of work. It is a great tool to gather large amounts of data in limited time. Pros: Very user friendly and simplistic for those who don’t have a lot of experience with coding. Highly customisable depending on the project. Great tutorials and support available. Cons: Some bugs and perhaps a little limited depending on the website scraped but overall good. Rukmi Consumer Goods, 1001-5000 employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months“I can’t believe the progress made by ScrapeStorm. ”Overall: Compared to two months ago, ScrapeStorm has made tremendous progress, and I can’t believe it. It adds a lot of new features and is much easier to use than I found that ScrapeStorm now has a new feature that can filter data. This is really a great feature. I can filter out the data I don’t need directly in the process of collecting data, instead of waiting for all data to be collected and then manually processing the data. I think this feature will help me a lot. It allows me to save time processing data. And each column of data can be moved according to my wishes. I really like this Just because it is growing rapidly, it will have some bugs, but these are not problems for me, I can accommodate irley nagerRetail, 11-50 employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months“The best web scraping tool I have ever used”Pros: It is very simple to use for me, the whole interface is very simple and clear, I especially like its visual operation and intelligent recognition Sometimes support is a bit slow, it does not affect the use, I believe it will continue to improve, so that users have a better experienceToby, Self-employedUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“Blown Away By This Tool – Saves Me 100+ Hours Every Month”Overall: The tool is really easy to get started with and use, even if, like me, you are a complete beginner and have never used a scraping tool before. This is going to save me an absurd amount of time doing otherwise mind-numbing manual work to get this up-to-date data for my customers every week. The affordable price makes this a no-brainer I love the ease of use of ScrapeStorm. I have never used a scraper tool before so was expecting it to be complicated or even impossible to use. ScrapeStorm does the thinking for me with its AI and fishes out the information I need in under a So far I haven’t found any limitations for my AnalystInternet, 1001-5000 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“I have used this software for three months”Pros: I have used this software for three months. When I first started using it, it seems to be a very new software. Of course there are a lot of bugs, but the staff is very good and answered some of my questions. I saw its progress in these three months, and I am very much looking forward to the launch of the cloud collection function. I heard that engineers have recently made major changes to the software, hoping it will be Sometimes the same operation will not scrape the data, and the software version has not been updated for a long time, I hope the next update can solve these terior DesignerArchitecture & Planning, 11-50 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“A good helper for extracting and processing data”Overall: This is really a good helper for extracting and processing data, it can save you a lot of I have been using this software for 4 months and it is really a very useful software. As a designer, I usually need to find a lot of picture material, but other web scraping tools I have used before can’t download the extracted pictures directly. This is very troublesome for me. ScrapeStorm can do this, which makes me very surprised, which is the biggest reason I like to use Sometimes when extracting more data, the software will be slower, but compared with its advantages, I can completely ignore this small nance ManagerMarketing and Advertising, 51-200 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“A practical web scraper tool with shortcomings”Pros: The “Schedule Job” function of this software is very much needed by me. I set the real-time scraping of stock data. It will run automatically every hour and does not require me to operate. It saves me a lot of time and allows me to spend more time analyzing data, which is very helpful for my It is a pity that ScrapeStorm does not have the function of cloud collection. It can only be collected locally. This makes me pay attention not to shut down the computer or disconnect the ResponseBy Kuaiyi Technology on November 28, 2018Thank you for your support, we are developing cloud collection, and you will be able to use this feature and Marketing ManagerRetail, 51-200 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“ScrapeStorm makes my work a lot easier and saves me a lot of time”Pros: This software is much better than I thought, although it is still relatively new software. I usually use it to extract product information, analyze recent trends, compare differences with competitors, and its scheduled job function is really great, It automatically extracts updated data as long as the time is set, and can also skip the data that was previously available, which makes my work a lot easier and saves me a lot of Sometimes it will flash back or get stuck, but fortunately it can automatically save the task to the cloud, so that the task is not lost. Timothy orRetail, 1-10 employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months“Finally, A great piece of software! ”Pros: Easy to use, designed well, does exactly what we needed it to do. Customer service is I haven’t found anything i dislike with the scraping software yet! Karl AnalyStRetail, 11-50 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“I really like this software. ”Pros: I really like this software. When I scrape the information of other merchants, ScrapeStorm can quickly extract the data I need. If it can’t be recognized sometimes, I can solve it quickly after I ask customer service. Since I don’t understand the code at all, sometimes the customer service needs to teach me about the usage of xpath and The speed of collecting the details page will be slower, but this does not affect my love for ResponseBy Kuaiyi Technology on November 26, 2018Thank you for your support, we are developing an accelerator, and will speed up the scraping speed in the teacherE-Learning, 1001-5000 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“Timed activation! Great function! ”Overall: After using it for a while, I think his collection function is still very good, although there are some minor problems, it can be solved quickly after contacting customer I really like its timed activation function, it really saves me a lot of time, this is my favorite point, of course, other functions are also very good. And it will also send me a custom service, which surprises The entire interface of the software needs to be optimized. I don’t know where many functions are. The novice boot function is not good enough. I didn’t even notice this function at udentFinancial Services, 1-10 employeesUsed the software for: I used a free trial“Fantastic User Experience”Overall: Really Nice!!! Pros: The product is convenient to use even for users without any previous web scraping experience. The design is user-friendly and easy to be learned within an So far the experience is really good. Haven’t find out yet. Christy ManagerHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months“If there is anything wrong with xpath”Pros: I recently tried to use the flowchart mode. This is a bit hard, but it can scratch a lot of pages that smart mode can’t scrape. I also probably understand the role of each component, and I am still trying to find ways to use In my use, the other is very good, but there will always be problems when setting the next page loop. After checking, my settings should be correct. I don’t know if there is anything wrong with chibald nancial AnalystReal Estate, 201-500 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“A great scraping tool compared to previous software”Pros: I can use it to quickly collect information about real estate changes every day. For these not very complicated information, ScrapeStorm has a great ability to scrape, which allows me to quickly grasp the market conditions for The recognition of pagination is not very good. It is often impossible to automatically recognize the pagination button, and sometimes the image information cannot be scraped after ntrollerAccounting, 51-200 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“For me, the most useful thing about this software is its automatic recognition function”Pros: For me, the most useful thing about this software is its automatic recognition function, because I really don’t understand programming and code. This feature allows me to get the data I need I have encountered the data that has been scraped during the scraping process, and selected skip and continue, but will still scrape the data ResponseBy Kuaiyi Technology on November 27, 2018Thank you for your support. We will solve this problem nagerReal Estate, 501-1000 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“ScrapeStormthe software is exactly what I want! ”Pros: This software is exactly what I want! It does work. It is easy to use, but can do a lot of things. It can even be used with some sophisticated websites. It allows me to take in a lot of data points and focus on statistical analysis and data The software never gave me any problems. I think no one can find better software to extract data from the web. The software works exactly as L. ownerAccounting, Self-employedUsed the software for: I used a free trial“Data collection”Pros: Smart mode is top. very ease to use.
Use for daily data extraction. Data needed for final free trail only limited export facilitiesMansfield Research CoordinatorMarketing and Advertising, 11-50 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“A good web scraper that can start quickly”Pros: This tool does not require input code and xpath, it makes the “simple” to the extreme, the whole process is very ScrapeStorm sometimes stops when it scrapes data for two or three pages. Later I found out that the software did not automatically recognize the paging button. There are a lot of websites that don’t automatically recognize pagination, which makes me very troubled. Török Wholesale, 1-10 employeesUsed the software for: I used a free trial“Its a Good software”Pros: It’s Easy, and power fuel. I like the lego software programing:D Cons: There is none, the program is fantastic! Ciyuan StudentComputer Software, 10, 001+ employeesUsed the software for: I used a free trial“The best web scraper I have met so far. ”Overall: This scraper is really easy to use and has a great user interface. I have tried several scraper tools but they all have different flaws. I was working on my course project and unfortunately, my target webpage has a strong anti-scraper mechanism, only this tool could precisely get what I need. Really a useful tool, but I hope the monthly charge could be cheaper. Pros: 1. Nice and friendly user interface.
2. Precise scraping capability.
3. Goog free trial experience.
4. Easy-understanding video tutorial. Cons: The monthly charge is a little bit ncent DeveloperInternet, 201-500 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“Its logic is particularly good”Pros: When I use this software, I especially like its advanced mode. I think its logic is very clear. It is very easy to extract the data by just figuring out the logical connection between each The ability to recognize data needs to be improved. Sometimes two or more data are glued together, causing the data to look ntent writerWriting and Editing, Self-employedUsed the software for: I used a free trial“The solution to all scrapping hurdles! ”Overall: Being a content writer, it requires me to read & research full websites for some clients. In such situations, Scrapestorm helps me to the best of my needs! Pros: – its ease of use!
The simple interface is what makes Scrapestorm work best for me. Even a person without any tech background can easily use it to the However, the cost is worth the amount, but if it could be lower then it would be asons for Switching to ScrapeStorm: Webscrapper & one more mozilla add-on, i tried… All were too slow! Tom UnspecifiedUsed the software for: 6-12 months“free and easy to use, extract data with even no configuration”Pros: It can analyze the page and extract multi columns like price and title automatically with no pre configuration. It save me a lot of time other than editing the xpath I think it should add more cloud services like data hosting and ip rotation. some APIs like webhooks and restful will be more orMarket Research, 1-10 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“THE ONLY WEB SCRAPER YOU NEED! ”Pros: Scrapestorm offers a fantastic visual workflow that allows users to visually implement the scraping of its target websites. Having little no knowledge of how scraping systems work behind the hood and minimum programming language this software was able to deliver my data in a cost effective The software took a little while to get our head around. This is most likely due to our inexperience with software such as this. Reasons for Switching to ScrapeStorm: Octoparse was unable to scrape the websites we required. Switching to Scrapestorm allowed us to scrapoe the data straight out of the box! pushpinder udentResearch, 10, 001+ employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years“Best Web Scraping Software”Pros: This is by far the best software available right now. Cons: There was nothing wrong with the under & President Non-Profit Organization Management, 1-10 employeesUsed the software for: I used a free trial“Protecting models worldwide”Overall: Our nonprofit organization’s aim is specific to the fashion modeling business.
Scrapestorm assisted us in gathering valuable information for our business analysis mainly helping us search for listings of credible agencies and more important routing out the”fake| agencies/agents that may be a risk for the young and vulnerable or aspiring models.
Pros: The few simple clicks to get the data you needCons: For the moment no cons, we are satisfied, We will update our review as we continue to use scrapestorm Joachim udentEducation Management, Self-employedUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“Powerful tool to collect answers to Facebook group question”Overall: Powerful tool to collect answers to Facebook group questionPros: Easy to start and use. Powerful tool to collect answers to Facebook group question Cons: Lot of features made me a little bit confused in the beginning. But give it 5 minutes and you are onboard. Grace UDENTFinancial Services, 10, 001+ employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“High speed scraping tool”Overall: It’s a good scraping tool and make my scraping process much more easier Pros: Scrape data in fast speed and easy to export! Love it! Cons: Scraping process might stop halfway when there are too many rows of dataStudentEducation Management, Self-employedUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“Very useful tool for scraping answers to Facebook group questions ”Overall: I personally love the smooth feature for scraping answers to Facebook group questions Pros: Easy to use and quick response time when using. Cons: Not really much but all the nice features require you to dig in to the product before using it smoothly. Ali gional ManagerReal Estate, 201-500 employeesUsed the software for: Less than 6 months“If it speeds up, it will get better”Pros: I want to use this software to collect data from the real estate industry and use a large amount of data as a basis to analyze the current market conditions. ScrapeStorm can identify most of the web pages, and the settings for running are relatively simple, which I can understand. I have high expectations for it and hope to implement the cloud capture function very quickly, which will make it easier for me to collect When collecting some websites, it will be very slow, perhaps the anti-collection measures of the website, hoping to speed up the scraping speed.
About Price & Web Scraping Tools | Imperva
What is web scraping
Web scraping is the process of using bots to extract content and data from a website.
Unlike screen scraping, which only copies pixels displayed onscreen, web scraping extracts underlying HTML code and, with it, data stored in a database. The scraper can then replicate entire website content elsewhere.
Web scraping is used in a variety of digital businesses that rely on data harvesting. Legitimate use cases include:
Search engine bots crawling a site, analyzing its content and then ranking it.
Price comparison sites deploying bots to auto-fetch prices and product descriptions for allied seller websites.
Market research companies using scrapers to pull data from forums and social media (e. g., for sentiment analysis).
Web scraping is also used for illegal purposes, including the undercutting of prices and the theft of copyrighted content. An online entity targeted by a scraper can suffer severe financial losses, especially if it’s a business strongly relying on competitive pricing models or deals in content distribution.
Scraper tools and bots
Web scraping tools are software (i. e., bots) programmed to sift through databases and extract information. A variety of bot types are used, many being fully customizable to:
Recognize unique HTML site structures
Extract and transform content
Store scraped data
Extract data from APIs
Since all scraping bots have the same purpose—to access site data—it can be difficult to distinguish between legitimate and malicious bots.
That said, several key differences help distinguish between the two.
Legitimate bots are identified with the organization for which they scrape. For example, Googlebot identifies itself in its HTTP header as belonging to Google. Malicious bots, conversely, impersonate legitimate traffic by creating a false HTTP user agent.
Legitimate bots abide a site’s file, which lists those pages a bot is permitted to access and those it cannot. Malicious scrapers, on the other hand, crawl the website regardless of what the site operator has allowed.
Resources needed to run web scraper bots are substantial—so much so that legitimate scraping bot operators heavily invest in servers to process the vast amount of data being extracted.
A perpetrator, lacking such a budget, often resorts to using a botnet—geographically dispersed computers, infected with the same malware and controlled from a central location. Individual botnet computer owners are unaware of their participation. The combined power of the infected systems enables large scale scraping of many different websites by the perpetrator.
Malicious web scraping examples
Web scraping is considered malicious when data is extracted without the permission of website owners. The two most common use cases are price scraping and content theft.
Price scraping
In price scraping, a perpetrator typically uses a botnet from which to launch scraper bots to inspect competing business databases. The goal is to access pricing information, undercut rivals and boost sales.
Attacks frequently occur in industries where products are easily comparable and price plays a major role in purchasing decisions. Victims of price scraping can include travel agencies, ticket sellers and online electronics vendors.
For example, smartphone e-traders, who sell similar products for relatively consistent prices, are frequent targets. To remain competitive, they’re motivated to offer the best prices possible, since customers usually go for the lowest cost offering. To gain an edge, a vendor can use a bot to continuously scrape his competitors’ websites and instantly update his own prices accordingly.
For perpetrators, a successful price scraping can result in their offers being prominently featured on comparison websites—used by customers for both research and purchasing. Meanwhile, scraped sites often experience customer and revenue losses.
Content scraping
Content scraping comprises large-scale content theft from a given site. Typical targets include online product catalogs and websites relying on digital content to drive business. For these enterprises, a content scraping attack can be devastating.
For example, online local business directories invest significant amounts of time, money and energy constructing their database content. Scraping can result in it all being released into the wild, used in spamming campaigns or resold to competitors. Any of these events are likely to impact a business’ bottom line and its daily operations.
The following is excerpted from a complaint, filed by Craigslist, detailing its experience with content scraping. It reinforces how damaging the practice can be:
“[The content scraping service] would, on a daily basis, send an army of digital robots to craigslist to copy and download the full text of millions of craigslist user ads. [The service] then indiscriminately made those misappropriated listings available—through its so-called ‘data feed’—to any company that wanted to use them, for any purpose. Some such ‘customers’ paid as much as $20, 000 per month for that content…”
According to the claim, scraped data was used for spam and email fraud, among other activities:
“[The defendants] then harvest craigslist users’ contact information from that database, and initiate many thousands of electronic mail messages per day to the addresses harvested from craigslist servers…. [The messages] contain misleading subject lines and content in the body of the spam messages, designed to trick craigslist users into switching from using craigslist’s services to using [the defenders’] service…”
Web scraping protection
The increased sophistication in malicious scraper bots has rendered some common security measures ineffective. For example, headless browser bots can masquerade as humans as they fly under the radar of most mitigation solutions.
To counter advances made by malicious bot operators, Imperva uses granular traffic analysis. It ensures that all traffic coming to your site, human and bot alike, is completely legitimate.
The process involves the cross verification of factors, including:
HTML fingerprint – The filtering process starts with a granular inspection of HTML headers. These can provide clues as to whether a visitor is a human or bot, and malicious or safe. Header signatures are compared against a constantly updated database of over 10 million known variants.
IP reputation – We collect IP data from all attacks against our clients. Visits from IP addresses having a history of being used in assaults are treated with suspicion and are more likely to be scrutinized further.
Behavior analysis – Tracking the ways visitors interact with a website can reveal abnormal behavioral patterns, such as a suspiciously aggressive rate of requests and illogical browsing patterns. This helps identify bots that pose as human visitors.
Progressive challenges – We use a set of challenges, including cookie support and JavaScript execution, to filter out bots and minimize false positives. As a last resort, a CAPTCHA challenge can weed out bots attempting to pass themselves off as humans.
Learn more about protecting your site from malicious bot traffic with Imperva’s bot management solution.
Easy Web Scraping using WebHarvy
Web Scraping is the technique of automatically collecting public data (many thousands of records) displayed by websites (over multiple pages) in spreadsheet format which can be saved as a file or to a database. Examples are product listings data from eCommerce websites, property listings data from real estate websites and business listing details from yellow pages websites.
The task which takes many hours or days for a human to perform, the web scraping software can complete in minutes.
WebHarvy is a visual web scraping software, which helps you to easily create web scrapers for any website via a visual interface. Load the page from which you need to extract data and select (point out) the data which you need to extract. It is that easy.
The following are some of the main features of WebHarvy.
Automate browser tasks like form submission, search, clicks etc. to load the page from which you need to extract data
Automate login
Scrape data from multiple pages by following pagination links
Scrape data from pages which use infinite scroll (load more data as you scroll down)
Scrape data anonymously by using proxy servers / VPN / Human emulation mode
Automatically scrape data listed under multiple categories within a website
Parallel extraction from multiple pages
Extract images, text, html, email addresses, URLs etc.
Search and extract data from search results for a list of keywords
To know more please visit
Frequently Asked Questions about is scrapestorm safe
Is ScrapeStorm legit?
ScrapeStorm is the best web scraping software I’ve ever used, and it takes almost a lot of data to extract from xpath. Before that, I deliberately learned about xpath. With this software I can quickly extract information about the products I need and provide me with current market trends.
How do you use ScrapeStorm?
Web scraping is the process of using bots to extract content and data from a website. Unlike screen scraping, which only copies pixels displayed onscreen, web scraping extracts underlying HTML code and, with it, data stored in a database.
What is web scraping used for?
Easy-to-use yet powerful visual Web Scraping Software WebHarvy is a visual web scraping software, which helps you to easily create web scrapers for any website via a visual interface. Load the page from which you need to extract data and select (point out) the data which you need to extract. It is that easy.
