With markets becoming more competitive by the day, businesses must find new and innovative methods to stay ahead of their rivals. Web scraping has become a prevalent method businesses use today to gather information to develop marketing strategies and advertising campaigns. The benefits of web scraping have proven so successful that increasingly more businesses are starting to employ this tool.
If you’ve wanted to learn web scraping and how to do it easily and effectively, you’ve come to the right place. Click here to learn more about SERP API and continue reading as we discuss this in more detail.
What Is Web Scraping
Web scraping is the extraction of public data and information from a website. Also known as data harvesting, web scraping can be done manually or using automated tools. The data collected is then exported into a format that adds value and can be analyzed, such as a spreadsheet.
Web scraping can be used to gather information from competitors such as their products, descriptions, and prices. The process can also be used to monitor customer sentiment and identify market trends and opportunities. Companies also scrape Google SERP for various reasons that benefit their business goals. The most common reasons include analyzing competitors’ ads, building unique URLs with the most searched keywords, SEO optimization, and researching direct competitors’ prices and services.
Web Scraping Done With Python Code
There are several web scraping tools available. You can use a pre-built tool like Smart Scraper, Octoparse, or ParseHub. However, those with programming knowledge might prefer building their own. Python seems to be the most popular programming language among users to build a web scraper for several reasons:
- Python programming code is easy.
- An extensive collection of Python libraries are available.
- Python can be dynamically typed.
- Python has a simple, easy-to-grasp syntax.
- Python has a community that can assist you should you get stuck.
- The code can be written quickly.
With all these advantages, you may think you should follow this route. However, it’s still a tedious process involving research and writing codes that apply to the information you’re seeking to extract.
When you run a web scraper, a request is sent to the URL you’ve identified. The web server acknowledges a response to your request, sending the data to you in XML or HTML format. The scraper will parse the HTML or XML page, search for the needed data, and extract it.
Use a SERP API
What if we told you there’s an even more straightforward way to complete your web scraping faster and more effectively?
A SERP API can gather real-time information and data from any search engine, including Google, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. The application programming interface will send one request and extract all the requested data and information. Should the first request fail, the SERP API will continue to send requests until it can deliver the result.
The benefit of using a SERP API is that it can collect the data you request without actually accessing the website. This means you place less of a strain on the website with your scraping requests. Most of these tools already include a proxy, so that’s one less third-party program that you need to find and pay for. A proxy will also protect your scraping activities from bans and give you access to other geo-locations.
Scalable SERP Data
Search Engine Results Page scraping is highly scalable, and the straightforward data extraction tool will assist you in collecting real-time SEO keywords and data. Additionally, the SERP API can provide a solid foundation to build SEMrush or Ahrefs into your business.
The API has enhanced capabilities by monitoring and identifying what users ask for and most of the featured snippets. Scrape more real-time data from Google, including Bing, Yandex, and Baidu, for information on online stores, videos, images, popular listings and products, related searches, restaurant data, hotel availability, and more.
How Does the API Work
The API ultimately simplifies the process of web scraping with the implementation of only four steps:
- Choose your integration method (real-time or proxy-like).
- Select the target domain and choose web scraping parameters.
- Send POST requests to available SERP API sources.
- Receive JSON or HTML data.
Get the Ball Rolling
Simplify your web scraping efforts today by trying out a SERP API, and find out how easy it is for yourself. Harvest data quickly and easily in only four short steps that guarantee data and result in real-time.