What is Web Scraping?

Web scraping is the automated process of extracting data from web pages and transforming it for later use. Scraping effectively converts the entire internet into a database, allowing businesses to make powerful decisions and effective features based on otherwise inaccessible information.

Web scrapers are software libraries that enable developers to query documents for specific data, typically leveraging CSS selectors to find the desired elements. Headless browsers are excellent for this, as they allow you to dynamically interact with the page during the data extraction process. Important when working with sites that require authentication, interactivity, or additional assets to load (e.g. images, stylesheets, media) before extraction.

Web scraping has a multitude of applications, from real-time data collection for market research to automation that powers your favorite travel aggregator site. More sophisticated scrappers can even feed big data engines used in AI and machine learning.

How can BrowserCat help with web scraping?

BrowserCat makes scraping easy. We allow you to run thousands of processes simultaneously. We run sophisticated “user spoofing” strategies by default. We support sending requests from all over the world. And we allow you to connect using a custom proxy of your choice.

All you have to do is write the script and connect to our headless browser fleet. We handle the rest!