Challenges to Web Scraping
Besides the challenge of the legality of web scraping, there are also other problems that pose a challenge to web scraping.
- Data Warehousing: Data extraction at a scale will generate a large amount of information to be stored. If the data warehousing infrastructure is not properly built then the searching, storing and exporting of this data will become a cumbersome task. Hence, for large-scale data extraction, there needs to be a perfect data warehousing system without any flaws and faults.
- Website Structure Changes: Every website periodically updates its user interface to improve its attractiveness and experience. This requires various structural changes too. Since the web scrapers are set up according to the code elements of the website at that time, they require changes too. So, they require changes weekly too to target the correct website for data scraping as incomplete information regarding the website structure will lead to improper scraping of data.
- Anti-Scraping Technologies: Some websites use anti-scraping technologies that thwart away any scraping attempt. They apply a dynamic coding algorithm to prevent any bot intervention and use the IP blocking mechanism. It requires a lot of time and money to work around such anti-scraping technologies.
- Quality of Data Extracted: Records that do not meet the quality of information required will affect the overall integrity of the data. Making sure that the Data Scraped meets the quality guidelines is a difficult task as it needs to be done in real-time.
Introduction to Web Scraping
Web scraping is a technique to fetch data from websites. While surfing on the web, many websites prohibit the user from saving data for personal use. This article will brief you about What is Web Scraping, Uses, Techniques, Tools, and challenges of Web Scraping.
Table of Content
- What is Web Scraping?
- Uses of Web Scraping
- Techniques of Web Scraping
- Tool for Web Scraping
- Legalization of Web Scraping
- Challenges to Web Scraping
- Future of Data Scraping