Data Collection

Wanna scrape web data but keep running into obstacles? Collecting web data in 2023 sure requires extensive knowledge. Websites are armed with smart antibots, few suspicious moves, and an IP ban is knocking on your door. That's why Smartproxy is hosting a free webinar filled with tips about successful scraping in 2023

Wanna scrape web data but keep running into obstacles? Collecting web data in 2023 sure requires extensive knowledge. Websites are armed with smart antibots, few suspicious moves, and an IP ban is knocking on your door. That's why Smartproxy is hosting a free webinar filled with tips about successful scraping in 2023

If you’re using our residential or datacenter proxies, you know how important it is to keep track of your traffic usage. Understanding traffic usage patterns is vital for optimizing projects and making informed decisions. That's why we're excited to introduce a few improvements in monitoring your traffic statistics on the dashboard!

As you’ve probably understood, we’re all about bringing new updates that make your proxying and scraping journey simpler. And today is no exception because we’re excited to announce the Product Selector feature, which allows you to double-check the target compatibility before purchasing a Smartproxy solution.

You asked, we listened. And that's how we've become the first provider in the market to release an epic feature, available with our 10M+ ethically-sourced mobile proxies. It's called... OS filtering!

Folks, we have some exciting news for you today. We just released the first dedicated Social Media Scraping API in the market. Woot woot! This all-in-one solution is designed to simplify real-time and on-demand data collection at scale. Yup, no worries about managing proxies, several scrapers, and parsers – we handle it all for you, so you can focus on the data insights you seek.

OK, let us take you on a journey back in time. A long, long time ago, we published a blog post about mobile proxies. There, we shared a lil’ secret about Smartproxy’s plan to launch our own mobile IP pool in 2023. Fast forward to this day, and we’re happy to announce that not only have we arrived in 2023, but we’re also finally ready to unveil the latest addition to the proxy family, called… mobile proxies!

Nowadays, web scraping is essential for any business interested in gaining a competitive edge. It allows quick and efficient data extraction from a variety of sources and acts as an integral step toward advanced business and marketing strategies. If done responsibly, web scraping rarely leads to any issues. But if you don’t follow web scraping best practices, you become more likely to get blocked. Thus, we’re here to share with you practical ways to avoid ...

For many SEO masters out there, it’s no surprise that using Google Trends for keyword research is a common practice. But, as it turns out, it goes way beyond just keyword research – there’re quite a few ways you can hire it to boost your SEO efforts. So, let’s take a closer look at how Google Trends work. We’ll show you how savvy SEO managers use Google Trends to boost their rankings. Shall we begin?

Every day, millions of people turn to search engines to find solutions to their problems and answer their questions. From “How to bake cookies” to “beautiful prom dresses,” this beast tamed inside the name of Google has answers to all of the queries you could enter. With Google being the most popular search engine, SEO gurus focus heavily on ranking high there – rightfully so.  However, keyword research is no longer just finding a popular search query and ...

Back in the day, SEO was about producing content and stuffing it with keywords. In today’s world, SEO specialists require a whole range of interdisciplinary skills and tools to earn that sweet spot in the rankings. Many of their responsibilities include manual, repetitive work, which can get pretty overwhelming and distract from the tasks that carry a bigger impact. AI-powered tools and assistants like ChatGPT with other SEO processes might seem like rocke...

It’s hard to imagine a successful business that doesn’t gather or use any form of data in 2023. And, when it comes to data sources, Google search engine result pages are a goldmine. But gathering Google search results isn’t that simple – you’ll encounter technical challenges and hurdles along the way. Luckily, some powerful tools and methods can automate search result extraction. Fret not – we’ll review different methods to scrape Google search results, di...

At Smartproxy, we’re always cookin’ up new ways to make scraping a breeze. Starting from eCommerce Scraping API to our most recent creation — No-Code Scraper. And don’t let anyone tell you that proxies and scraping are as complicated as rocket science. It could actually be a rather simple (and sometimes even fun) process! But let’s be real, even the top guns extracting data from eCommerce giants like Amazon might get those pesky CAPTCHAs or worse — IP ban....

An Instagram profile scraper allows you to gather public Instagram profile data. Instead of building a scraper yourself, use our Social Media Scraping API. In this blog post, you’ll get Python code samples for real-time and on-demand data collection at a 100% success rate. Avoid blocks and errors and scrape with a shielded IP – check out this game-changing scraping tool and follow our step-by-step guide on how to set it up!

No-code scraping can be complex. I tested quite a few software for codeless scraping and noticed that the existing solutions could still be a struggle for non-coders. So, naturally, I felt encouraged to develop something different: Smartproxy No-Code Scraper. Yes, my idea wasn't unique, as it's a commonplace in the developers' world, but I knew I could simplify scraping.  So, I gathered our small team – a product designer, front-end and back-end developers...

A YouTube comment scraper is a tool that extracts comments from a selected YouTube video. Comments are an awesome resource for researching your own or your competitor’s brand, which can be used to your advantage. While YouTube offers a free Data API, it’s limited in its capabilities. By following this YouTube comment scraper tutorial, you will scrape YouTube comments with a simple code and get a neat result.

Is it possible to have the powers of a developer without being one? Can a person without any coding knowledge scrape something? These were the questions that I kept asking myself while chasing new side-hustle ideas. One day, I decided to find an answer myself and build a tool that forms data lists without writing a single line of code. It was challenging, but I convinced my talented colleagues that this idea had great potential and that we were ready to ma...

Out of a dozen established social networking platforms, Twitter is one of the leaders. Politicians, comedians, musicians, athletes, and even big corporations commonly use it to network, share news, daily updates, promote a product or event, and so on. With so many participants in the network, the data you can find on Twitter can help you power your marketing strategy. So if you own a business, you should be interested in Twitter to keep up with the latest ...

The American company Amazon and its founder (the second richest and possibly the first most disliked person in the world) don’t need long introductions. Today Amazon is a giant in e-commerce, cloud storage, digital streaming, artificial intelligence, logistics, etc. We’ll focus on the e-commerce side of Amazon. Simply put, it’s the world’s leading online retailer. According to certain statistics, 90% of shoppers compare the price and quality of a product o...

Everybody likes watching videos. But not everybody knows how to unlock hidden content or how to use videos as a great alternative data source for research purposes. Luckily, a single dope platform is enough if you use the right tools. If you’re into videos, you probably know what Vimeo is. This  platform allows you to access high-quality video content without distracting ads. For viewers, it’s an entirely free platform; only the creators need to choose the...

Social media scraping can look like a tough nut to crack due to strong anti-bot systems. Gladly, it’s not a rule, at least in Telegram’s case. This platform supports various Telegram bot automation, making the scraping process easier.  There’re a lot of ready-built solutions for that, but you can easily make one yourself with a bit of coding and the Telegram API. Yes, this platform even has its own API! Dope, innit?

OK, OK. You prolly know it already, but let us remind ya. YouTube is a site that allows users to upload, watch, and interact with videos. Since 2005, it has become the MVP platform for various things – starting from storing fav clips or songs and ending with marketing for companies to promote their products. Hundreds of hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. It means it’s impossible to scrape the search results manually, well, unless you're...

Today Instagram isn’t the newest or the hippest, but still remains one of the top social networking services as around 500 million people are actively using it daily. However, it’s arguably not as fast-paced as TikTok while being more captivating than Facebook. Such a balance means that Instagram can be a perfect place to find an audience of young adults (or millennials, if you will). Whether you’re part of a corporate team or a solo hustler, a business wi...

Have you ever wondered how much Mozart could earn if he had lived in our times? If he were alive now, he could collect a stack of money from music royalties alone.  Creating music doesn't end up with finishing a song, finding a way to spread it to the world, and then sitting peacefully while earning your pennies. Music creation is a serious business that has its own monetization and commercialization methods. One of them comes from royalty payments.

A widely available internet leaves the door open for people to find information about everything. For example, everyone can check a business's online presence before trusting it. So, everything that could be found online about your brand helps your potential audience evaluate if you’re legit. Statistics only prove that – 9 out of 10 online shoppers admit that reviews influence their buying decisions. It stands to reason – checking unbiased opinions helps a...

Information keeps the world spinning as more people continue to spend their time online. By buzzing in the digital world, we keep generating more useful information, which can be collected and analyzed.  Different informational units and formats are spawned every second, so the data analysis becomes more rock’n’roll, making the collection process less determined. In fact, everything can be gathered and analyzed, from the strictly formatted spreadsheets to ...

Public data scraping is becoming a hot topic, and our talented devs cannot just sit back and relax. So, they took on a challenge and presented FOUR(!) powerful tools designed to harvest all sorts of web data.  How does getting real-time data from any corner of the world at a 100% success rate sound for you? If we got your attention, let's say you've already found your partner in the scraping game. Now you only need to pick your fighter (ekhm, Scraping API)...

If you are a software engineer, you’ve probably heard those two words many times. If not, don’t worry, we will explain the logic behind them as applying concurrency and parallelism may level up your programming journey. Concurrency and parallelism are closely related to multitasking. And what do we usually do during trips? We keep checking the map, maintaining a conversation with passengers, thinking if we packed everything we needed, and even dealing with...

More companies are full of zeal and zest about automated and cloud-based solutions than ever before. The enthusiasm especially revolves around topics related to data management strategy. As a result, Data as a Service has become a popular choice among startups and other businesses dealing with data integrations, storage, and analytics processes.

No matter what industry you may belong to, your customers are an inseparable part of your business. Feedback from them can be an extremely valuable resource that, if dealt with right, can bring both benefit and efficiency. But how do we sift through, measure, analyze, and draw conclusions from feedback?  I mean, at Smartproxy, we, too, take our time to understand our customer base and their needs. Without it, we wouldn’t be much of a business. So, what is ...

Drum roll round, please! SERP Scraping API starts a free trial! Sometimes you gotta check a thing without buying one. With this free trial, you’ll get 3k requests for 3 days straight to test if this tool is your jam. After the free trial ends, you’ll be automatically charged for a Lite subscription plan. If you feel that it isn’t what you were looking for, don’t forget to cancel the free trial before the end of it!

It probably wouldn't be too bold to state that data-driven decisions rule the world. Gathering big data can open up crucial insights to improve your business strategy and activities. A massive amount of data is out there, and its growth is nowhere near the finish line. It's expected there will be 63 zettabytes of data floating on the internet by 2025. We’re talking about 21 zeros here – an unfathomable amount of data.  The good news is that this enormous l...

Data is the new oil, which helps drive businesses and make better-informed decisions. For a long time, companies relied on traditional data (usually gathered internally or from official sources) to predict overall market trends, analyze competitors, and understand customer behavior.  However, alternative data has become the new cool, which can aid almost any business, investors, financial institutions, or just simple people like you and me. And with proper...

What do you usually do when a specific question or product pops into your mind, and you need a quick answer? You probably type it on Google and select one of the top results. Looking at this from a business perspective, you probably want to know how Google algorithms picked those top-ranking pages since being one of them attracts more traffic. The result pages of the largest search engine in the world are an excellent source for competitors’ and market res...