Scraping
Web Scraping
A technique for automatically extracting specific information from websites and collecting it.
In Simple Terms
Scraping is a technique that uses programs to automatically read and save information from websites. It's used in situations like collecting only the latest headlines from a news site into a single list, or recording product prices from an online store every day. It automates what would otherwise be a tedious manual copy-and-paste process, making it possible to gather large amounts of data in a short time.
Behind the Name
The term "scraping" comes from the English verb "scrape," meaning to remove or gather something by rubbing or dragging across a surface. The name captures the action of pulling out just the pieces of data you need from the enormous amount of content spread across web pages.
Take a Closer Look!
Scraping is a technique for automatically extracting specific information from websites and processing it into a usable format.
Simply put, it means loading an entire web page and pulling out only the information you need from it.
Web pages are designed with layouts meant for human readers, but scraping lets you extract their content as raw data that computers can work with directly.
For example, manually copying product information from a 100-page online store one entry at a time would be exhausting — but a program can finish the same task in seconds.
More specifically, scraping works by analyzing the underlying code of a web page and pinpointing exactly the fields you need — such as titles, prices, and dates.
The extracted data is then organized and saved in spreadsheet software like Excel or in databases, and is widely used for price research, news aggregation, market analysis, and more.
That said, there are some important things to keep in mind when scraping.
Flooding a server with a large number of requests in a short period can put a significant strain on it, and some sites explicitly prohibit scraping in their terms of service — either of which can cross into unacceptable behavior.
In the world of the web, it's strongly expected that publicly available information be used responsibly and without causing trouble for others.