3 Reasons Why AI Web Scraping in What Your Business Needs
Any business that wants to do well needs to gather relevant data to formulate winning strategies.
Traditionally, businesses have used web bots to gather information. Adding artificial intelligence (AI) to web scraping only enhances the web scraping capability of web bots.
Internet giants like Google, Amazon, and others use AI web scraping to stay ahead of the competition. Now that computing speed and AI costs are coming down, web scraping is well within reach of everyday businesses.
Let us examine how AI web scraping can benefit businesses that use it.
What is web scraping?
Web scraping involves searching the web for data and information that is useful to you or your business. Businesses use web scraping for brand and price monitoring as well as lead generation.
You could scrape the web manually, but that would take ages as you would have to sift through many web pages to get the information you want. This would be time-consuming and tedious.
For years, programmers have used web bots which are small programs that crawl the web gathering the information you need. Web bots speed up the process of web scraping tremendously. They can crawl the web at very fast speeds and gather the information you need in no time at all.
To gather data, web bots need to get past security measures put in place by websites that resist web scraping attempts. But by using rotating residential or mobile proxy servers and rotating user agents, web bots can get past the security to gather the information that is required.
Traditional web scraping has served data needs well for many years. But the advent of AI systems has revolutionized the data collection industry. web scraping is taking over the web scraping industry.
Using AI to enhance web scraping
Artificial Intelligence uses computers to mimic human intelligence. AI systems can be “taught” or “trained”, and they can “learn” and “think”. AI systems are just programs. However, they are specially written programs that learn based on the data they collect and on rules built into the program.
With the cost of computing going down, the speed of computers increasing, and with a better understanding of AI systems, it is possible to build AI-enabled web scrapers that can rapidly gather the data you need from various sources very easily.
Benefits of AI web scraping for businesses
While there are many benefits of using AI web scraping, we have highlighted just a few. Here are just three reasons why you need to have AI web scraping systems in place:
- It can gather vast amounts of data at very fast speeds
For many businesses, the timely collection of data in real-time is a critical element. web scraping can help you achieve this. AI-enabled web scraping tools can search many websites simultaneously and gather the information you want. Not only that, but they can also gather vast amounts of data in very short times. You can explore all the possibilities of AI-powered web scraping tools at oxylabs.io.
This itself makes web scraping very viable. It’s an essential service that every business needs to explore to keep ahead in the race to success. With computing costs going down, AI web scraping is also becoming an attractive and affordable option.
- It provides accurate data
Another important aspect of data gathering is that the data needs to be accurate and current. AI web scraping systems can ensure that the data they gather is accurate. The best part is that AI systems can learn as they go along. Apart from gathering vast amounts of timely information, web scraping can also provide accurate data.
- It reduces the cost of data gathering
Though web scraping systems may be expensive to set up initially, in the long run, they result in cost savings. This is because AI systems can learn from past experiences. So, it may cost a lot to initially set up the system and the rules to run it. But once it is up and running, it starts learning and then can function in a very cost-effective manner.
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Conclusion
The web is a rich source of public information that is available for those who want to use it. Businesses need that information. That is why web scraping is now a priority with most businesses. Web scraping allows businesses to devise strategies to stay ahead of the competition and learn of new trends.
The demand for more useful information has brought to the fore inadequacies in traditional web scraping processes. However, with the advent of efficient and affordable web scraping processes, it is now possible to gather information at rapid speeds, efficiently, and in a cost-effective way.