Web Scraper

Web Scraper
hie friends,

I want to know what do you mean by the term called "web scraper" in the internet and technology world. Is it some kind of a new technology, a feature or something else. Can anybody provide me the information regarding this web scraper ?

thanks....

#2
19-05-2009

Techguru01
Member

Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 2,116
Re: Web Scraper
Web scraping is a computer software technique of extracting information from websites. Such software programs, usually, simulates human exploration of the Web by either implementing low-level Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or embedding certain full-fledged web browsers, such as IE and Firefox.

Web scraping is closely related to -
Web indexing - a universal technique adopted by most search engines which indexes Web content using a bot.
Web automation - a technique which simulates human Web browsing using computer software.

Web scraping focuses more on the transformation of unstructured Web content, typically in HTML format, into structured data that can be stored and analyzed in a central local database or spreadsheet.

Uses of Web scraping - online price comparison, weather data monitoring, website change detection, Web research, Web content mashup and Web data integration.

Other names for Web Scraping - Web Scraping is also known as :
Web harvesting
Web data extraction