Three Reasons to Use Web Scraping Tools in 2024

Nowadays, data is everywhere and its amount tends to increase exponentially. This is both frightening and exhilarating since it means that if we exploit this data well in the context of a business, we can potentially obtain impressive results. 

In any case, this is what the various web scraping tools promise, some of which are very popular in this year 2024. In this article, we give you three reasons to use at least one for your business.

Access to data that is up to date

When we talk about the exponential increase in data available on the Web, we forget to mention that a large part of it is now obsolete. Indeed, it is not uncommon to come across the contact details of a company that has not existed for a few years. There is then no point in trying to contact it.

It turns out that most web scraping tools like Scrap.io take this important element into account. Data collection takes place in real-time, which automatically excludes companies that are no longer active. 

You can then generate a list of quality prospects from Google Maps that can be used later as part of a personalized marketing campaign.

On the other hand, web scraping can also be used to monitor consumer trends at a given moment. This is particularly effective on open social networks like Twitter and Facebook where users express themselves freely on various subjects.

A significant time-saving

Properly managing a business takes a considerable amount of time: optimizing your website for SEO purposes, creating relevant content, etc. If you also have to manually monitor all the social networks yourself and carry out research on companies in your geographic area, it is not really sustainable. 

Since web scraping tools also allow you to automate various processes, the effort required is much less.

Especially since for a large part of them, there are filters that are integrated by default. You don't even need to sort yourself after a list is generated, which is very appreciable!

A necessity to remain competitive

Finally, don't be naive: a large majority of companies have already used a web scraping tool today. So even if you find this method borderline in some aspects, you will also have to go through it to remain competitive. 

It's a bit like the emergence of artificial intelligence: if you are one of those who say that it brings nothing, you risk ending up on the sidelines very quickly.

However, let's be clear that not all web scraping tools are equal from a compliance point of view. Always check that the one you are about to use is GDPR compliant. 

This is particularly the case for those that only collect public data. Recently, suspicious gesture detection software, for example, was not GDPR compliant because it did not respect all the conditions related to privacy.