Web scraping is the automated process of extracting information from websites. It involves using software tools to retrieve and collect data from web pages, turning unstructured data into structured formats that can be analyzed and utilized. Web scraping is vital as it allows businesses and individuals to gather large amounts of data efficiently. It enables market research, competitive analysis, price monitoring, sentiment analysis, and other valuable insights that can drive informed decision-making. By automating the data collection process, web scraping saves time and resources compared to manual data gathering.
Then there are many challenges to web crawling in the increasingly sophisticated commercial web, such as certain websites may restrict and monitor access to their content. The crawling process may be limited by the website to get the required data. In order to prevent automated crawling, many websites employ various forms of human verification mechanisms, such as CAPTCHA. Handling these verification processes manually without the support of appropriate tools can be time-consuming and labor-intensive.