Can Selenium be Used for Web Scraping?

What is Web Scraping?

Web scraping is the large-scale extraction of data from the internet. It is carried out automatically. Scraping can produce a lot of specific information for the study, depending on the technology you employ.

Web scraping programs do not examine data on their own. They can, however, remove duplicates, mistakes, and missing data from the data set they return. Web scrapers get information from a website by scanning itself through the code for the items you need, or by pulling the full code off the page.

What is Scraping Used for?

Web scraping has a wide range of applications. Some firms use it for marketing, to obtain information on price trends or reviews, or to learn more about their clients' characteristics. Scraping is a technique used by some to evaluate the websites of competitors.

Scraping is a technique used by big firms like Google to gather data on people's behavior and purchasing patterns. That's how the targeted adverts follow you throughout the internet come to be.

Every day individuals can benefit from scraping. Before creating your content, you may scrape data from popular blogs or YouTube videos to discover which ones do well.

Various other uses of web scraping will include:

Scrapers or scraper bots are programs that scan the internet for information and return it. You can make your own if you know how to code, but if you plan to undertake large-scale data scraping, it's far easier to acquire one from a respected business.

Why Selenium is used for Web Scraping?

Selenium is a free, open-source website development tool that automates online browsing. It was created in 2004 and is mostly used to test websites and apps across a variety of browsers.

Selenium is a collection of testing tools, but Selenium WebDriver is the one that everyone uses for web scraping. WebDriver is in charge of cross-browser validation that is automated.

WebDriver may be used for web scraping in the same way as other automated crawlers because it's automated. You can program it to operate like a crawler. However, it is better for code testing.

What are the Drawbacks of Using Selenium for Web Scraping?

Selenium was not designed for web scraping but was created for automated testing. For using it as a scraper, you will need to create workarounds using coding and programing.

Selenium's learning curve is greater than those of purpose-built web scrapers because it isn't meant for scraping. Beginners may need to spend some time understanding the program in order and get it to do whatever they want, whereas web scrapers will work that way right out of the box.

When using Selenium to scrape data, there are additional speed difficulties. It's a lot slower than the other web scraping tools out there, therefore it's not a good choice for a large-scale or even medium-scale scraping business.

What Selenium Can be Used For?

Selenium is best used for what it was designed for: testing web pages. Selenium makes sense if you're a developer who wants to test websites across many browsers.

Selenium is an excellent choice if you're constructing a page or app and want to scrape data from it while also testing it. This allows you to keep an eye on the code while developing it and test functionality at the same time. Selenium performs admirably in this small-scale application.

Selenium is a good option if you need to scrape a website that requires JavaScript. Selenium may have an advantage here because many online scraping solutions utilize Python rather than JavaScript.

Selenium is also helpful for folks who are just getting started with web scraping. It shows everything in real time, giving the user visual feedback that helps them remember what they're learning.

Selenium, on the other hand, will be more of a barrier than a benefit if you want to get started quickly and execute large-scale data scraping jobs.

What to Use Instead of Selenium?

A pre-built scraping program is a method to just go if you ever need fast results and have no coding skills. An API that can extract HTML code from any website URL you enter, allowing you to scrape a site in seconds. You can save the output once the scraping is finished.

You may get started straight away with a pre-built scraper, allowing you to experiment with various parameters and requests. Different request parameters, home or data center proxies, and so on can all be tried out. You don't have to manually enter several bits of data when using a web scraping API you simply enter one website Address and it provides the code.

A pre-built scraper can be programmed to extract data from a website as infrequently or as frequently as you require. However, you should not bombard a page with thousands of requests every second. You can avoid getting blocked by programming your scraper to submit requests at random intervals of seconds or minutes.

Scrapers that are pre-built come with a high-quality collection of proxies that you can employ when scraping. When submitting data requests, proxies are an essential part of any online scraper's toolset because they disguise your location and identity by simulating regular human surfing.

Customer service is frequently available for pre-built tools. That implies you can reach out to their staff if you have a need that their scraper doesn't currently address. They may be able to include everything into the program to fulfill your requirements. So, you don't have to, a program works out the problems.

Using a solid pre-built scraper, you won't have to bother about anti-bot mechanisms. Anti-bot procedures and workarounds will have been planned by the team behind it.

Finally, the design of a pre-built tool is typically simple and uncomplicated. A good web scraping tool will be simple and quick to use, allowing you to get up to speed quickly without having to spend a lot of time learning the basics.

Final Words

iWeb Scraping creates pre-built APIs for a wide range of applications, including social media data, SERP pages, and more. They're all simple to use and come with a dedicated support team available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Visit the website to learn more about the many scraping tools available, and get in touch with us if you require a customized solution. Our programs can collaborate with you to create something that fulfills your requirements.

For more details, contact iWeb Scraping today!!