Challenges of Web Scraping

Web scraping, or grabbing data from websites automatically, is becoming a popular tool. It can suck up all sorts of information, from text and pictures to videos. No wonder it’s in high demand! Imagine having tons of useful info from different websites all gathered in one place.

This data is like gold for businesses these days. It helps them understand what people want and need, which lets them grow faster.

But sometimes, while using this, we can face many issues in extracting large amounts of online data from websites because it also comes with many inherent issues that can make the process challenging and require careful consideration.

Challenges and Problems of Online Web Scraping

Here are some of the key challenges associated with web scraping:

Anti-Bot System in Web Scraping:-

It is also known as a bot-detecting system. This software program is designed to prevent automated bots from web scraping and extracting data from websites.

It checks everyone who wants access to the website, lets in only the humans [real humans], and keeps out the robots [automated bots].

You can check out Anti-Bot Tools by clicking here.

Dynamic Content:-

Many websites use Java scripts to protect data during web scraping. JavaScript generates content dynamically on the client side, making it difficult for the scrapers to extract and access the desired data from the HTML source.

To get the information, you need to have a special key, which is a special tool like Selenium or Headless. It can mimic the Real user and unlock dynamic content.

Frequent Structural Changes in Web Scraping:-

In web scraping, frequent structural changes refer to when the website’s and layout’s HTML code undergoes constant modification.

These changes can cause problems for web scraping tools because they rely on specific patterns and locations to extract data from website.

When websites frequently change their structures, scrapers need to be updated to track the changes. Sometimes changes can be a time-consuming and frustrating process because they happen very often.

Here are some of the tools that I am mentioning that can help track changes in websites:

•   XPath
•   ChangeDetection.com
•   Selenium or PhantomJS, etc.

Unstable Loading Speed:-

Sometimes, during data scraping, website speeds get slow or show an error loading page when it receives too many access requests at the same time.

However, scraping tools don’t know how to deal with such an emergency, and the scraping process has broken up.

High Traffic:-

Websites often experience periods of high traffic while scraping, which can overload their servers and lead to slow loading times.

It is common during peak times or when a campaign or promotion is happening.

Poor Website Infrastructure:-

When a website uses outdated technology or inadequate resources, it cannot handle a load of multiple simultaneous requests during web scraping and causes unstable loading speed.

Resource-Intensive Content:-

Some of websites use large images in their content, and other resource-intensive elements can take longer to load, especially on a slow network.

Anti-Scraping Measures:-

Some websites intentionally use anti-scraping measures to slow down requests from suspected web scraping tools.

This is done to make it difficult to extract data from websites efficiently.

IP Blocking:-

IP blocking is a widely used method that prevents a connection between a specific group of IP addresses and a server.

It happens when the websites detect a repeated request from the same IP address.

IP blocking is usually used as a defence to prevent automated bots and scrapers from extracting data from the website without permission.

Websites do this to protect their data and only offer it to legitimate users.

CAPTCHA:-

Captcha is use by websites to protect their information from bots. They are like puzzles, blurry reading text, or choosing pictures that only real people can solve, not bots.

It confirms to the websites that only real people are getting website access, not the bots.

Nowadays, many captcha solvers can be implemented into bots for continuous web scraping.

OCTOPARSE can be implemented into bots. It can solve three kinds of captchas. Automatically, including hCaptcha, ReCaptcha V2, and Imagecaptcha.

Honeypot Traps:-

People use the honeypot trap as a hidden trap on a website, designed to protect and catch the bots. Who is trying to steal their data?

Websites create some areas filled with fake data, which is only detectable by bots and invisible to humans.

When bots interact with the honey trap, it gets revealed as a scraper and gets rejected by the Security of the website.

Stay up-to-date:-

The web scraping landscape is constantly changing, so scrapers need to get updated regularly to keep up with the constant changes that can happen on the websites.

Ethical Challenges and Problems of Web Scraping

Respecting Robot.txt:-

Robot.txt is a file that tells the search engine which part of the website, or content they are allowed to crawl.

The scraper should always respect robot.txt to avoid scraping the part that websites don’t want to get crawl to maintain the website privacy.

Avoiding Data Overload:-

Scraping too much data from the websites can cause performance issues because of overload. During web scraping, scrapers should be mindful of how much data they are scraping to avoid data overload.

Using the Data Responsibly:-

Scrapers should use the data they scrape from websites Responsibly, not illegally or unethically.

Wrap Up

Web scraping generally faces two main challenges: technical and ethical. Technical challenges include dynamic content, frequent website changes, slow loading speeds, and security measures like IP blocking and CAPTCHAs. Ethical challenges include respecting robots.txt, avoiding data overload, and using the data Responsibly. These challenges can make scraping unreliable and inefficient.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How big is the web scraping software market?

The growth in data volume is Accelerating the growth of the web scraping software market, which was estimate at ~$1.7B in 2020 and project to reach ~$24B by 2027. However, web scraping faces challenges as governments and data creators set legal and technical barriers to ensure the privacy of their data.

2. How often do web scrapers get change?

It is usually need adjustments every few weeks, as a minor change in the target website affecting the fields you scrape might either give you incomplete data or crash the scraper, it all depends on the scraper.

3. Which programming language is best for web scraping?

Python is consider the best choice among developers due to its numerous advantages, like an extensive library ecosystem, large and active community, Beginner-friendly, etc.