Three Common Methods for Web Data Extraction

Web data extraction is also known as web harvesting or web scraping. This is a software method used in order to take out required information from different websites. This method uses different software in order to extract the data from the World Wide Web. The data is extracted using the HTTP method i.e. the Hypertext Transfer Protocol or using a fully embedded web browser like the Mozilla Firefox or Internet explorer. There are different types of Web Data Extraction Software which are used in order to get the data.

The web extraction is also known as web indexing. The Web Data Extraction Software indexes the information which is extracted from the World Wide Web with the help of web crawler or bot. This is the most common and universal technique applied in order to extract the data from the internet.

According to recent studies there has been a steep increase in the usage of Web Data Extraction Software. This is because most of the businesses are using the data on the internet to reach out to their target audience. Here are some of the most common methods used in order to extract the data:

·         The process of web extraction is the process to automatically collect the data from the internet but all these process require human help – the most common human – computer interaction is the copy and paste method. This is considered among the best methods and used widely by most of the users. In most of the web extraction cases this is the only method which is workable to get the data.

·         The next method to be used is to use very sophisticated and advanced algorithms. Here artificial intelligence is applied to the web page. There are programs which has the ability to analyze the semantic content present in the HTML page. You can easily download or extract both dynamic and static web pages with the help of HTTP requests. These requests can be given to the server with the help of socket programming. There is a program which is known as data mining – in this program there are various templates which are used in order to get the information source and also extract the contents from the web.

·         Text grepping and expression matching is another common method used in order to extract data from the websites. This is a simple method but considered as the most powerful method to extract the data from the websites – the reason being UNIX grep command or regular expression matching techniques as it is called is used to get the data from the sites. The programming languages used are also known as Python or Perl. 

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