Tuesday 23 September 2014

In their enthusiasm and due to lack of proper knowledge, people install software that works as a screen or web scraper and gets them lots of information. Of this only 10% may be actually useful and the user has to weed out unnecessary information. What screen scrapers do is they simply extract information available on pages displayed on computer screen, without discriminating between that which is useful and that which is not. It requires human intervention to evaluate the downloaded data and filter it which means investment in time and effort. Advanced software may automate some of the processes but the package will not crawl web pages or index data.

Data mining, on the other hand, is an intelligent method of extracting data from websites. It includes a crawler that visits all pages, finds selected data according to preset filters, fetches the data, evaluates it and presents it in a usable format, with the least amount of human intervention. It can search for and analyze large amounts of information in a better way than simple scraping. This software is more sophisticated and requires a lot of background programming and inclusion of sophisticated algorithms. It is also expensive.

For users who may be dissatisfied with their current web scraper, there is intelligent web scraper software that also works like data mining software. In fact, it does more than mine data; it accesses data from password protected websites and does it all anonymously through proxy servers with rotating IP addresses, leaving no trace. That’s the software to use for serious work. 

Tuesday 2 September 2014

If you must get web data extractor, get the one that is full featured and features maximum automation. It may take a little while for you to master its features. You may have to learn about its quirks and peculiarities. There are so many options you could become confused but in time you will learn to distinguish and pick the ones most suitable for the web data extraction task in hand.



It costs more, infinitely more if you compare it to some of the free ones floating around the web but this web extractor online comes with all the bells and whistles should you ever need them. Are you up against a website that asks you to login with a user name and password that you don’t have? Let this crafty web data scraper get to work and it will worm into that site’s confidence, tunnel through and fetch you the data you want. You have to tell it what you want and it will sniff out exactly what you want.




Remember the time when you used a half baked data extractor and were saddled with so much junk it took you almost a day to separate the chaff from the grain? The best web data extractor is almost intelligent and intuitive so you do not have to worry. Just tell it what to do, snooze and when you wake up, your data is there. This happens only when you get the best web content extractor currently available. It does what it is supposed to do when you tell it to and that is what you really want. 

Monday 1 September 2014

All developers of web data extraction software know what their customers want and include a set of features most commonly used.

If your interests or your line of work require you to access websites, even those with password protection and some measure of protection you will need online data extractor that tunnels through automatically. Naturally, you would expect it to have features that allow you to set filters, set schedules and also specify the depth to which you want it to scrape and return data in exactly the type of format you want. No point in having useless data, sorting it and weeding out unwanted information only to find that this is not what you asked for in the first place. Some level of intelligence in the software is nice to have. Not all developers have the competence to incorporate the type of intelligence you are seeking.




There’s more. If you really want data that is meaningful, you will navigate to websites that have such data. As luck has it, these websites also have protection and may also be on the alert to check for attempts at scraping or data extraction. So, before you consider any other feature, first look for features that allow you to do your web extraction activity anonymously. The online web extractor you use should connect to multiple proxy servers and switch between proxies while the extraction is in progress, even rotating IP address so that no suspicions are aroused and you do not become liable for any legal action.