Web scraping is a skill that can be mastered by anyone. Web scraping skills are in demand and the best web scrapers have a high salary because of this. Web scraping allows you to extract data from websites, process it and store it for future use.
In this blog post, we will talk about what skills are needed for web scrapping, how you can master the skill, why you should learn how to do so and finally some examples of how people have used this powerful tool in their own life!
Some skills needed to learn web scraping are:
- learn programming language
- HTML, CSS and JS coding skills
- inspecting web page elements
Learn programming language
Web scraping is software-based. It requires you to know at least one of the popular programming languages like Python or Ruby. These days it’s hard for anyone who wants to make money online not to have these two in their toolbox.
If you choose to learn Python, then you will need to learn about the BeutifulSoup library.
HTML, CSS and Javascript coding skills
Web scraping involves parsing data from websites that use any combination of HTML/CSS tag structures which can be interpreted by browsers into something meaningful using JavaScript libraries enabled by the browser itself. The more familiar you are with this process, the easier it becomes to identify and extract data from websites.
Since websites are made up of several HTML, CSS and JS, you'll need to understand how they work and how you can extract them.
inspecting web page elements
Web scraping is about identifying web page elements that are being displayed on the website. Web pages have a lot of tags, sometimes thousands or even more! It's impossible to go through every single tag and try to find what you’re looking for manually.
To make it easier (and faster), use Inspectors like Web Developer, Firebug, Webkit Inspector or similar.
The next step would be getting your hands dirty with Web scraping. Once you have the above skills in place, it’s time to get your hands dirty and write a few lines of code using one of these programming languages mentioned above.
Why should you learn web scraping?
As web scraping becomes bigger and more popular, more companies and data scientists are looking for web scraping experts as they can help extract data that can be used to make valuable decisions!
Web scraping is a skill that’s in high demand and can open new doors for you. It is also not as hard as it sounds like, once you get the hang of it, you will find yourself extracting data from websites with ease!
What can web scraping be used for?
Web scraping can provide you access to a wealth of information. As a result, many enterprises make use of web scraping to improve their services and operations.
For example, web scraping is incredibly common in the real estate industry for market analysis and to build databases of available real estate listings.
Have you ever utilized a website that allows you to compare the prices of several different items at once? These websites utilize web scraping to gather product pricing from numerous locations in order to provide customers with the greatest deal. They then get a commission on that sale.
Businesses can also use web scraping for lead generation, to help through a website transition and much more.
Check out our guide on how businesses across many industries use web scraping.
Learn more about web scraping today!
Would you like to learn more about web scraping? You can with our free online web scraping courses!
We currently offer 4 web scraping courses:
- Basics of web scraping
- ParseHub web scraping - Beginner certification
- ParseHub web scraping - Intermediate certification
- ParseHub web scraping - Advanced certification
You'll learn more about what web scraping is and how to scrape data without any coding skills!
