Web scraping is vital for many businesses looking for up-to-date information on competitors, market trends, and consumer behavior. However, understanding the difference between web crawlers and web scrapers is essential to using these tools effectively.
In this information search process, companies face challenges such as poor data quality, difficulties in accessing data, and compliance with privacy regulations. These obstacles can delay decision-making and result in poorly informed strategies, harming competitiveness.
To solve these problems, it’s crucial to know when to use a web crawler or a web scraper . This article explores their functions and applications in detail, as well as offering solutions to optimize data collection in your company. Read on to turn raw data into valuable insights!
What is a web crawler?
Also known as a spider or bot, a web crawler is an automated program designed to navigate the Internet and index (or catalog) the appointment directly to perform the root canal of web pages. These bots are used to explore websites and update search indexes, making them essential for many types of applications.
How do web crawlers work?
A web crawler begins its work with a list of andorra business directory known as seeds. These initial URLs serve as a starting point. The crawler visits each URL, downloads the content of the page, and extracts additional links found on it, adding them to the list of URLs to visit. This process is ongoing, allowing the crawler to discover new pages constantly.
Tracking Process
- List of URLs : The target of a web crawler is always a URL, or a list of them. Considered a “to-do” list for the web crawler.
- HTTP Requests : From a URL, obtained from the URL List, an HTTP request is made to download the content. Depending on the volume of the list, a larger number of requests may be made in parallel in order to traverse the list in a timely manner.
- URL Extraction : The content of the page is analyzed and all URLs are extracted. The extracted URLs can be filtered depending on the purpose of the web crawler.
- Data Storage : The extracted information is stored in a database or search index. This allows the search engine to retrieve this information quickly when needed.
- Recursive Crawling : The URLs extracted from a page, after the request to download the content of a specific URL, are added at the end of the URL List. To also go through the process of request, extraction and storage.