FAQ

What is Web data scraping?

There are enormous useful information in the Internet, however, most of them exist in a non-structural document form. It makes integration and reuse of information extremely difficult.

Web scraping is a technology that can transform non-structural content into a structure data form (such as Excel document, MySQL database). To be short, Web scraping is a computing technology which can extract large amount of data in a fast and effective way. Due to the nature of it can extract any displayed data from web browsers, it is also called Screen Scraping. The ultimate goal of data scraping is to extract non-structural information from multiple websites and store it in a structure data form, such as CSV、JSON、XML、ACCESS、 SQLITE、MSSQL、MYSQL etc..

A single project of Web scraping can be describe as three steps:
1) Crawling target websites and downloading related web pages.
2) Extract target data from downloaded web pages. (We call it fields, such as name, address, etc.)
3) Store those fields in a structure format document. (Such as CSV, MySQL, etc.)

How can I benefit from Web data scraping?

The foundation for a successful business is based on large amount of target clients and professional data, understanding customer preference and behaviour will make you one step ahead in the business. Web data scraping service is the way to achieve professional results in a short cut. It will not only lower down operation cost, but also keep you ahead of your business. Most of client have already been benefiting from our services or customised softwares.

Our services apply to the following areas in business:

· Create potential clientele list.
· Collect valuable data from your competitors.
· Capture data in new business operations.
· Create your own product catalogue.
· Integrate information in your industry, to facilitate your business decisions.
· Build vertical search engine.
· Automation for web systems.
· Monitor information.

What advantages Web data scraping has?

· Simple: You do not need to use any software, just tell us your target website and the contents that you interested in.

· Flexible: You can gain access to data from any website, especially data from dynamic loaded websites.

· Fast: For a workload that would takes 20 person a working day, we can finish it within hours.

· Customised: We can customise scraping program according to different target websites, we are experienced to handle all sorts of websites with totally different structures.

· Accurate: We can delivery exact scraped data you require.

· Low cost: You can save all the extra cost for manpower and equipments, let alone precise time and energy.

Is data scraping legitimate?

It is actually very common to scrape data from public websites and it is legitimate. (In fact, data from google is scraped data.) We collect data using crawl programs that we custom developed for the target website, which is public and non-private data. We do NOT support illegal meaning (such as hacking) to access back-end database. We scrape data under the assumption that client have legitimate reason, probable cause, and access right to the target data source. Meanwhile, we reserve any right to deny access for data that we consider illegal or unreasonable.

What types of data you can scraping?

Any data that you could see through web browsers can be scraped, but the levels of difficulties will be different.

Here are some factors will affect the the levels of difficulties for data scraping, resulting a higher cost.

· Limitation for a single IP access.

· Web page with inconsistent layout.

· Encrypted data, which needs decryption.

· Data dynamically loaded by JavaScript.

· Data presented through Flash.

· Enormous amount of data.

What advantages do you have in comparison to using data scraping tools myself?

Data scraping tools have limitations:

Not adjustable to many scenarios. For example, Login Scraping, Ajax dynamic data loading, joint acquisition, and any types of logics and data encryptions.

Hard to operate. These tools require users to analyze website structure and layout, normally, users have to develop data scraping rules in codes by themselves.

Can NOT perform secondary process for the collected data.

We can provide customized data scraping service and develop data scraping script, depending on the practical level of target website and customer business needs. To achieve perfect result of data scraping by handling all sorts of complex situations such as data encryption, connection limitation and data logic.

How much will it cost?

The total cost is mainly determined by the complexity and amount of data from the target website, click here to see our standard fees.

Normally, for a small scale website, which has a well defined structure, clear data in HTML, and the total amount of data is small, we charge under 1000 RMB.

We also sell databases that we already collected for couples of famous social network websites (like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). They usually much cheaper than the cost of a customised data scraping.

How long will it take to scrap data from one website?

The time frame for data scraping depends on scale of the target website. Data scraping can be completed in one day if it is a simple small website. However, a large scaled website could take up to weeks of work. For any large data scraping projects, we will provide dedicated professional servers to do the work. We store big data using AWS(Amazon Web Service). We will give you a estimate time for the project before we start.

How can you hire you?

You can submit your request form here, we will get back to you within ONE business day. Otherwise, you can contact our online customer support directly.

How can I pay?

We take a downpayment at 50% of the total price, and the rest will be collect when we deliver the final data.
We also support multiple ways of paying via Paypal, Bank Transfer, for further details please click here.

Can I have refund?

Our principle of refunding is as following:

When a project can never be delivered or complete, we will provide a full refund.

If you cancel the project before we started working on it, you can have a refund.

If you change your business needs after we started the project, we can adjust the total price.

What types of technologies you use?

Our data scraping program mainly uses open-source, free, multi-platform and multi-thread Python language.

We have dedicated professional servers for large-scale data scraping projects. Meanwhile, we both rent and own numbers of mainframes in multiple server rooms that are capable of running simultaneously to collect and process data.

To analyze JavaScript, We use Webkit technology.

We also familiar and knowledgeable in other languages such as: PHP, Ruby.