Data Collection

In today’s digital era, businesses can access relevant public data to reach their goals. But here’s the catch – data collection is quite a hassle that takes up too much time and effort. That’s where web scraping, a method of automatically gathering publicly accessible website information, comes in. In this blog post, we’ll explore web scraping, its best practices, and ready-made tools to maximize efficiency and productivity. Make sure to stay until the end...

Google Maps is a beautiful tool that allows anyone to travel the world with their eyes and see many fascinating things. If you’re a nomad, it’s your go-to companion in finding the next destination. But if you’re a data collection enthusiast, you should be excited about the potential data that Google Maps holds. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the benefits of scraping Google Maps and provide a comprehensive guide on how to do it using Python and our reside...

GitHub is one of the most significant sources of technical knowledge on the internet, especially for developers building intricate applications. Follow this guide to learn how to extract this valuable data and effortlessly follow the latest tech trends.

Artificial intelligence is transforming various fields, ushering in new possibilities for automation and efficiency. As one of the leading AI tools, ChatGPT can be especially helpful in the realm of data collection, where it serves as a powerful ally in extracting and parsing information. So, in this blog post, we provide a step-by-step guide to using ChatGPT for web scraping. Additionally, we explore the limitations of using ChatGPT for this purpose and o...

Standards are a means to clear and define communication between people and things in the world. For example, the human language, USB sockets on computers, or the fact that you must add cereal before pouring milk. When it comes to computer applications and systems, one standard stands out above the rest as the most popular choice for developers – XML (eXtensible Markup Language). In this article, we’ll explore how you can parse data from XML files using Pyt...

In this article, we’ll explore the different kinds of errors and exceptions, what causes them, and provide solutions to solving them. No more headaches and cursing your code until it gets scared and starts working – master the language of Python to understand precisely what it wants from you.

Google Sheets is a powerful tool that hosts various data management and analysis features. While it usually deals with information already gathered elsewhere, few know that Sheets have built-in functions that can also gather website data on their own! This article will explore the many benefits of using Google Sheets for web scraping and how to build a powerful in-house web scraping machine without ever leaving your browser window.

With the rapid improvements in artificial intelligence technologies, it seems that 2024 will present some new challenges for web scraping enthusiasts and professionals. Over the years, anti-bot systems have become increasingly sophisticated, which makes extracting valuable data from websites a true challenge. As businesses intensify their efforts to protect against automated bots, traditional web scraping methods are being put to the test. The surge in ant...

Does web scraping take too much of your and your team's time? Struggling to balance efficiency with cost-effectiveness? Well, we’ve got great news for all you tech enthusiasts! Smartproxy hosted an exclusive webinar: “Web Scraping Efficiently: Save Your Team’s Time and Costs”. By registering via the link above, you can replay the webinar for free. From seamless tool integration to savvy scraping practices, join us and improve your team’s approach by boosti...

Since the late 2000s, scraping has become the go-to solution for businesses and individuals seeking to extract public data from the web. Anyone not scraping public data nowadays is at an obvious disadvantage. One common challenge of web scraping is collecting data from pages with delayed data loading. Here’s a typical scenario: you’re trying to scrape a website, eagerly waiting for the results, only to find no data available. This often happens due to dyna...

In recent years, there has been a significant shift in the way content creators, influencers, and artists connect with their audience and monetize their talents. OnlyFans, a subscription-based social media platform, has emerged as a website that allows creators to share exclusive content directly with their dedicated followers for a subscription fee. OnlyFans scraping, which involves extracting publicly available data from the website, has sparked an inter...

This comprehensive guide will explore the powerful capabilities of Smartproxy's datacenter proxies for scraping Amazon product data. Whether you're an eCommerce professional, researcher, or developer seeking to extract those juicy insights from Amazon's marketplace, you'll discover how Smartproxy's datacenter proxies can be a cost-effective solution to enhance your workflow, improve results and conquer any typical obstacles encountered while web scraping.

Bright Data stands out as one of the top proxy and web scraper providers. However, despite the platform’s pros, such as quality and reliability, its cons, like affordability or policies, may be a major drawback for some users. The good news is that Bright Data isn’t the sole option available in the market. If you're looking for a provider that better suits your needs, we suggest exploring various options and finding the perfect solution for you.

Facebook is like a dinosaur that’s yet to go extinct. Founded in 2004, it’s still part of 1.9 billion people’s daily lives worldwide. And do you know what disrupts daily life like nothing else? Technical glitches. One such frustrating issue that Facebook users sometimes encounter is the Session Expired error. In this blog post, let’s shed light on this Facebook error: what does it mean, what causes it, and what are some practical solutions to resolve it, w...

Look no further, buddy. A powerful tool for gathering public data is already here. Say hi to our newly launched product – Site Unblocker!

Got stuck with the annoying proxy error codes? Chances are that you ended up with undesirable 404, 407, or 503 status codes at least once, and it wasn't a pleasant experience. But it may seem frustrating only from the first glance – a better understanding of what you are dealing with helps find the solution quickly. Think this: the idea of the status code is to indicate the problem, so you won't need to.

Let’s be honest, a headless browser sounds, to say the least, peculiar if you haven’t heard the term before. C’mon, how can your good ol’ Chrome or Firefox be headless? Yup, it’s mind-boggling, but before you deep dive into that philosophical void (seriously, try not to do this to yourself), let’s answer this question in technical terms.

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!

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!

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.

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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)...

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.

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...

The world of cybersecurity is evolving daily. With every great technological advancement comes a need to control and protect it from abuse. One of the main countermeasures against cybercriminals is none other than honeypots. Since its first use in the early 90s, honeypots have proven to be extremely helpful in catching hackers and improving overall security.  They’re great, but when we talk about collecting massive amounts of publicly available data, honey...

So, you’ve found yourself in need of some images, but looking for them individually doesn’t seem all that exciting? Especially if you are doing it for a machine learning project. Fret not; web scraping comes in to save the day as it allows you to collect massive amounts of data in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it manually.  There are quite a few tutorials out there, but in this one, we’ll show you how to get the images you need from a stat...

Web scraping is on the rise these days. We’re not just talking about tech people who have specialized knowledge. People of all backgrounds turn to web scraping as a way to improve various aspects of their work. From SEO specialists, sneakerheads, freelance social media managers to small and big online business owners.  Having access to publicly available data can help you make valuable decisions for work, research, and even just daily life. But what if you...

Psst! Come closer to hear a secret: collecting publicly accessible data can skyrocket your business to the next level. If you unlock and gather valuable info, you can easily monitor brand reputation, compare prices, test links, analyze competitors, and much more. While the benefits sound legit, collecting data manually can quickly become a pain in the neck. But what if we told you that it’s possible to enjoy all the advantages without any need to sweat? Wi...

The internet has changed quite a bit, hasn't it? Today, almost every popular website you go to is tailored to your specific needs. The goal is to make the user experience as good as possible. It sounds amazing for the end-user, but for someone who’s trying to web scrape dynamic content, it can prove to be quite the challenge. That doesn’t mean it’s not doable!  In this blog post, we’ll go through a step-by-step guide on how to web scrape dynamic content wi...

The internet is more than just the information superhighway. It’s also a vast ocean of all sorts of data. Regardless of your industry and needs, this ocean is full of details that can help you gain an advantage over competitors or dig out some helpful info. Market research, lead generation, keyword analysis, business insights – it all sounds nice, but how can you actually use them for your needs? To answer that, we’ve collected the best-performing web scra...

Google has become a gateway to easily-accessible information. And one of the best ways to make use of Google’s limitless knowledge is web scraping. We’ve just released a detailed blog post about scraping Google SERPs with Python, where we cover lots of useful info, including the technical part. So before you dive into this tutorial – check it out. But what if Python is not exactly your forte? This blog post will show you how to scrape SERPs using a simpl...

Whenever you want to find an answer to a tricky question or dig out some advice, who (or what) do you approach first? Let’s be honest, it’s Google. Market research, competitor analysis, latest news, exclusive deals on designer clothing – whichever you’re after, 9 times out of 10, you’ll google it. Being the richest encyclopedia in the world, Google is also the most protective of all search engines, so extracting data from it can be pretty hellish. On the b...

If you're fresh-new to web scraping, you may not be familiar with selectors yet. Let us introduce ya – selectors are objects that find and return web items on a page. These pieces are an essential part of a scraper, as they affect your tests' outcome, efficiency, and speed. Yep, understanding the idea of a selector isn't that complicated. Finding the right selector itself might be. To be honest, even the two languages that define them, XPath and CSS, have ...

OK, let’s be honest. There's no secret that some websites hold a huge amount of precious data, such as pricing and product details, content, consumer sentiment, and much more. Accessing such data is extra useful for marketing and research purposes. And boy, oh boy, can it skyrocket your business to the next level.

Businesses collect scads of data for a variety of reasons: email address gathering, competitor analysis, social media management – you name it. Scraping the web using Python libraries like Scrapy, Requests, and Selenium or, occasionally, the Node.js Puppeteer library has become the norm. But what do you do when you bump into the iron shield of anti-scraping tools while gathering data with Python or Node.js? If not too many ideas flash across your mind, thi...

Web scraping has various uses and can be a huge time saver. It’s helped to start and run many businesses with best llc services, collect data for research, or simply automate boring menial work. But if you’re looking to get into web scraping, you’ll often find it presented as some abstract rocket science. Market research, alternative data, business insights? Sounds nice – but how the heck do I apply that for my needs?  Our friends at Smartproxy asked us (t...

Welcome to the proxy showdown! On one corner, we have Bright Data (formerly known as Luminati), a veteran in the game since 2014 that has earned a loyal following. In the other corner, we have Smartproxy, a newer player in the field but one that’s quickly making a name for itself. So, which provider should you choose? To see what’s what and make it easy for you to pick the provider that speaks your language, let’s look at Proxyway’s Proxy Market Research ...

Amazon is a dominant retail force. Many smaller businesses either work under Amazon’s brand or try to compete with it. Your business cannot go up against Amazon in terms of pricing data that you have access to. Marketing agencies can use Amazon price scraping methods to gather data on relevant Amazon products. Nevertheless, this approach is risky, because it goes against Amazon’s terms of service. The online retail giant’s system is also very vigilant to o...

Selenium is the perfect web development and testing tool. It lets you use every major browser and access any site or service you want to test. This versatility makes Selenium indispensable for more than just testing. For example, you can use Selenium with Python to scrape websites. Of course, you will need a proxy service to not get blocked. This is why we are doing this short introduction about how a Selenium proxy network can help you.

Scrapy and BeautifulSoup are two extremely popular Python-based tools that will enable you to scrape the web. Ah, and they’re free and open-source! So if you’re thinking of building a scraper, you might be a bit lost between the two options.  Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. This blog post will compare these two tools by looking over their main fors and againsts. Ready? Let’s go!

Web scraping is a major industry. It’s the best method you can use to gather enough data for a comprehensive market analysis. As one of the largest residential proxy networks, we work closely with leading data mining companies in the world. This is why we know the vital part that a web scraping proxy plays in any sophisticated data-gathering effort.

Web scraping is a well-known technique for extracting data from various websites. The presumption is that you can scrape any data if it is publicly available. So are there any unscrapable websites? I have to share the good news with you – technically, all of them are scrapable if you know how to do it. The thing is that some are harder to crack than others. Certain webmasters can be very anxious and overly protective of their content. They try to guard it...

Have you ever woken up all sweaty in the middle of the night with one question in mind: have I done something wrong by scraping Amazon? Well, you can answer this question in several ways. The good news is that they don’t necessarily give you a one-way ticket to scraping prison! Just a quick heads up – this article is for informational purposes only and it doesn’t constitute legal advice.