Introducing ScrapeShield: Discover, Defend & Deter Content Scraping

If you're a publisher, whether an individual blogger or major media outlet, you've undoubtedly experienced content scraping. Searching the web for an article you've published or other original content you've created and you find it copied and republished on some other random website. Often the site will be full of ads. And, sometimes, it will even rank higher in search results than your original work.

While you may envision an army of individuals copying and pasting your content on their sites, the truth is content scraping is typically an automated process with bots that grab original content and then republish it without human intervention onto link farm sites. CloudFlare has blocked many of these bots automatically in the past, but we decided it was time to do something to more actively stop them.

Introducing ScrapeShield

ScrapeShield is an app created by the CloudFlare team. It incorporates several existing CloudFlare features like email obfuscation and hotlink protection that serve to protect from content scraping and adds a number of new features as well. Because we believe every publisher of original content should be able to understand and control how their work is used, we're providing ScrapeShield free for every CloudFlare user.

Detect, Defend & Deter

ScrapeShield has different elements to help you detect when your content is scraped, defend your site against content scrapers, and even deter content scrapers from targeting you in the first place. If you enable ScrapeShield, CloudFlare will automatically insert invisible tracking beacons in your content. When automated bots scrape your content, they pull the beacons along with them. CloudFlare detects these beacons when they ping from sites that aren't your own. You can access your ScrapeShield control panel to see where your content is being republished. Not only is this useful in showing scraping, but you can also see users who are reading your content through proxy services like Flipboard or Pulse.

The data from the content beacons is fed back into CloudFlare's protection system. As CloudFlare identifies content scraping bots, we automatically prevent them from accessing your site. Just like Project Honey Pot, the original inspiration for CloudFlare, used traps to detect when spammers were harvesting email addresses, CloudFlare now uses data from ScrapeShield to identify content scrapers and keep them off publishers' sites.

Maze

We didn't want to just stop scrapers from attacking sites on CloudFlare, we also wanted to tie up their resources so they couldn't harm the rest of the web. To do this, we created Maze. Maze routes known content scrapers who are visiting ScrapeShield-protected sites into a virtual labyrinth of gibirish and gobbledygook. We dynamically throttle the bandwidth and speed so instead of the pages loading as fast as possible, the connection is held open to the scrapers and their resources are tied up.

We use excess resources on the CloudFlare network to generate Maze, and it doesn't consume any of our publishers' resources or add any additional load to their sites. What's beautiful about the system is that the only way that content scrapers can be sure they're avoiding Maze is to avoid CloudFlare's IP addresses entirely. For any content scrapers who may be reading this, here's a helpful list of all of our IPs so you can make sure to stay away.

No Pinning

Finally, with the rise of sites like Pinterest, innocent content scraping may become even more prolific. While many sites welcome their images being pinned, we wanted to make it easy to opt out. ScrapeShield includes an option to add the no-pinning meta tag to your site to prevent your images from being pinned to the site. As other similar services include a mechanism to opt out, expect that we'll include an easy way for you to do so right from the ScrapeShield interface.

The health of the web depends on publishers creating original content getting credit for their creations. Cloud Flare is committed to building a better web and we're extremely excited about ScrapeShield as a new tool to help publishers do exactly that.

Source: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-scrapeshield-discover-defend-dete/

Kimono Is A Smarter Web Scraper That Lets You “API-ify” The Web, No Code Required

A new Y Combinator-backed startup called Kimono wants to make it easier to access data from the unstructured web with a point-and-click tool that can extract information from webpages that don’t have an API available. And for non-developers, Kimono plans to eventually allow anyone track data without needing to understand APIs at all.

This sort of smarter “web scraper” idea has been tried before, and has always struggled to find more than a niche audience. Previous attempts with similar services like Dapper or Needlebase, for example, folded. Yahoo Pipes still chugs along, but it’s fair to say that the service has long since been a priority for its parent company.

But Kimono’s founders believe that the issue at hand is largely timing.

“Companies more and more are realizing there’s a lot of value in opening up some of their data sets via APIs to allow developers to build these ecosystems of interesting apps and visualizations that people will share and drive up awareness of the company,” says Kimono co-founder Pratap Ranade. (He also delves into this subject deeper in a Forbes piece here). But often, companies don’t know how to begin in terms of what data to open up, or how. Kimono could inform them.

Plus, adds Ranade, Kimono is materially different from earlier efforts like Dapper or Needlebase, because it’s outputting to APIs and is starting off by focusing on the developer user base, with an expansion to non-technical users planned for the future. (Meanwhile, older competitors were often the other way around).

The company itself is only a month old, and was built by former Columbia grad school companions Ranade and Ryan Rowe. Both left grad school to work elsewhere, with Rowe off to Frog Design and Ranade at McKinsey. But over the nearly half-dozen or so years they continued their careers paths separately, the two stayed in touch and worked on various small projects together.

One of those was Airpapa.com, a website that told you which movies were showing on your flights. This ended up giving them the idea for Kimono, as it turned out. To get the data they needed for the site, they had to scrape data from several publicly available websites.

“The whole process of cleaning that [data] up, extracting it on a schedule…it was kind of a painful process,” explains Rowe. “We spent most of our time doing that, and very little time building the website itself,” he says. At the same time, while Rowe was at Frog, he realized that the company had a lot of non-technical designers who needed access to data to make interesting design decisions, but who weren’t equipped to go out and get the data for themselves.

With Kimono, the end goal is to simplify data extraction so that anyone can manage it. After signing up, you install a bookmarklet in your browser, which, when clicked, puts the website into a special state that allows you to point to the items you want to track. For example, if you were trying to track movie times, you might click on the movie titles and showtimes. Then Kimono’s learning algorithm will build a data model involving the items you’ve selected.

That data can be tracked in real time and extracted in a variety of ways, including to Excel as a .CSV file, to RSS in the form of email alerts, or for developers as a RESTful API that returns JSON. Kimono also offers “Kimonoblocks,” which lets you drop the data as an embed on a webpage, and it offers a simple mobile app builder, which lets you turn the data into a mobile web application.

For developer users, the company is currently working on an API editor, which would allow you to combine multiple APIs into one.

So far, the team says, they’ve been “very pleasantly surprised” by the number of sign-ups, which have reached ten thousand*. And even though only a month old, they’ve seen active users in the thousands.

Initially, they’ve found traction with hardware hackers who have done fun things like making an airhorn blow every time someone funds their Kickstarter campaign, for instance, as well as with those who have used Kimono for visualization purposes, or monitoring the exchange rates of various cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and dogecoin. Others still are monitoring data that’s later spit back out as a Twitter bot.

Kimono APIs are now making over 100,000 calls every week, and usage is growing by over 50 percent per week. The company also put out an unofficial “Sochi Olympics API” to showcase what the platform can do.

The current business model is freemium based, with pricing that kicks in for higher-frequency usage at scale.

The Mountain View-based company is a team of just the two founders for now, and has initial investment from YC, YC VC and SV Angel.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/18/kimono-is-a-smarter-web-scraper-that-lets-you-api-ify-the-web-no-code-required/

Web Data Scraping - Scrape Business Data in no time

The Internet has evolved as one of the largest repositories of information for your business. You can design intelligent business processes to access a whole host of relevant information sources that will help you strategize, implement and deliver effective business objectives. Leveraging the benefits and usefulness of Web Scraping Tools is one such methodology that most businesses have adopted. Let us take a look at some of the ways it helps you easily scrape data relevant for your business.

Scraping for Business Information

Web Data Scraping is a technique, employed by most organizations. It involves the implementation of tools that help businesses extract unstructured data and convert them into usable business information. The focus of most scraping initiatives revolves around the organization’s need to glean the following information:

•    Competitor analysis to structure and strategist effectively

•    Price comparisons to price their products competitively

•    Customer feedbacks to enhance their product portfolio and provide customers with better brand experience   Market dynamics to help them identify areas of opportunities and threats

Using Scraping Tools

The abundance of information available on the Internet that helps you build up a productive business strategy can be easily extracted and leveraged to benefit your business. Tools have been designed with intuitive interface and intelligent algorithms which help in furthering this end.

Website Data Scraping tools are equipped for compatibility with a wide variety of applications so as to be able to explore a huge range of information sources.  These tools are fully automated and display the drag and drop facility ensuring users get to leverage the benefits of speed and convenience.

Data extraction tools are not only adept at extracting data, but are also equally well-equipped to combine relevant statistics from several social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Google Analytics and so on. This helps businesses to analyse trends and plan strategies accordingly.

Challenges of the Data Scraping Process

Just as there is no dearth of data to be collected from the Web, there is also an abundance of web scraping tools to execute the data collection process. However, the capability of the tool to help you collect the appropriate data needs to be assured before you can proceed with its implementation. Some of the challenges faced by most businesses owing to their wrong choice of tools include the following:

•    Run-of-the-mill extraction tools are unable to scale up sufficiently in order to capture large volumes of data

•    Some tools are also unable to establish compatibility with most data sources and therefore do not provide a holistic data collection approach

•    Some tools are also not equipped to conduct an automatic detection of updates made to a data source and therefore end up providing inaccurate data.

In the light of all this it is essential that you identify the right tool for your need and select one that is embedded with an updated technology to help you achieve the following:

•    Ensure that you are able to access the appropriate data that you want

•    Help you structure it in the format you want

•    Provide quick and easy access to all available data sources no matter how complex

•    Run accurately and is a reliable source to help you churn out usable information.

Source: http://scraping-solutions.blogspot.in/2014_07_01_archive.html

Data Mining and Market Research

Online market research attributes to success and growth of many businesses. Online market research in simple terms we can say it is the learning of current and the latest market situations which involve surveys, web and data mining modules. To date research by use of the internet it is very important since it depends on data gathered from internet services and then one can recognize that market research keeps the business successful.

A number of managers in small businesses have a mental deem in that online market research is obligatory to big or larger companies. For true you will understand that whether the businesses is medium, large or small actually need online marketing research and this is a reason why the significance of the process and allegation will approve the targeted and potential clients. In this case Data mining progression is employed to streamline on what targeted and potential clientele needs. Areas where data mining is used:

Preferences. In any given service or product, you will learn what a customer looking for and how your product or service is different from other competitors. By use of Data mining you will be able to determine the customer preferences and you will be able to modify your services and products meet the customer choice.

Buying patterns. What is known and created for purchasing patterns from different customers. A situation can be that customers try to spend a lot on certain products and little on others. But through Data mining it is easy to understand such purchasing patterns and finally plan the appropriate techniques to be used in the marketing.

Prices. To find out whether the company is selling its products to the clients or not prices are the key factors to take into account. One should understand on the right selling price of the products. Web scrapping is easier to find the suitable pricing.

Source: http://www.loginworks.com/blogs/web-scraping-blogs/data-mining-market-research/

SEO No No! Scraping & Splogging – Content Theft!

Until recently, you could as well as might possibly not have acknowledged how you can perform the earlier mentioned. Even so, the following element could be the really cool element.

Several. Get back to ScrapeBox Add-Ons and also down load your ScrapeBox Blog Analyzer add-on. Open it upwards, and transfer the actual .txt record you merely rescued. Struck start.

ScrapeBox goes through almost every back link you merely scraped and look these phones determine if these are your site that will ScrapeBox presently facilitates placing comments in. If it is, that turns environmentally friendly. If it isn’t, that turns reddish. Soon after it really is concluded, it is possible to “clean” the list insurance agencies the idea remove unsupported websites.

Just what you’re destined to be left with is ALL of the sites the competitor has back-links via, and most importantly, they all are capable of being mentioned in employing ScrapeBox!!

Help save that will “clean” listing with a report, import it this list involving websites you wish to touch upon, and then keep to the exact same steps you’d probably typically follow for you to touch upon websites. Inside of Ten mins you’ll have got all the comps website backlinks (which may be blocked by Public relations if you’d just like) along with you’ll be able to reply to every one of them inside a 20 min (because the list most likely won’t end up being Large).

Desire to force this specific even more?? Obviously you are doing, you’re in BHW

Each step is the same as over with the exception of one tiny issue as well as the addition of an extra step.

Instead of just employing a single foot print inside your first bounty (both from SB’s regular gui after which also the back link checker add-on) you’re likely to be using a A lot of open all of them. Here is what you do to consider this particular to a whole new amount.

Initial, you’re going to pick each of the URLs via AOL, Aol, Ask & Search engines using this footprint:

site:domainyourcompetingwith.org

That will go back ALL the at present found web pages in the area. Remove copy Web addresses along with save that will with a .TXT report.

Now, you’re planning to create the subsequent right in front of each of these URLs:

hyperlink:

Right now follow all of the steps while outlined above. Exactly what this may is actually obtain each of the backlinks to every single site of the rivals web site.

Because Google Back link Checker is simply capable of getting the first 1k Web addresses through Aol (while that’s all Google allows you to view) you could have missed out on a decent amount associated with website inbound links if they had been at night 1st 1k final results. Consequently performing the aforementioned further methods ensures that every brand new web site in the website anyone pay attention to backlinks implies a fresh and other pair of a listing of back-links that is possibly 1k back links long.

Now you understand how to locate, filtration along with take your competitors back links, stop looking at and also move and take action!

Source: https://freescrapeboxlist19.wordpress.com/

What are the ethics of web scraping?

Someone recently asked: "Is web scraping an ethical concept?" I believe that web scraping is absolutely an ethical concept. Web scraping (or screen scraping) is a mechanism to have a computer read a website. There is absolutely no technical difference between an automated computer viewing a website and a human-driven computer viewing a website. Furthermore, if done correctly, scraping can provide many benefits to all involved.

There are a bunch of great uses for web scraping. First, services like Instapaper, which allow saving content for reading on the go, use screen scraping to save a copy of the website to your phone. Second, services like Mint.com, an app which tells you where and how you are spending your money, uses screen scraping to access your bank's website (all with your permission). This is useful because banks do not provide many ways for programmers to access your financial data, even if you want them to. By getting access to your data, programmers can provide really interesting visualizations and insight into your spending habits, which can help you save money.

That said, web scraping can veer into unethical territory. This can take the form of reading websites much quicker than a human could, which can cause difficulty for the servers to handle it. This can cause degraded performance in the website. Malicious hackers use this tactic in what’s known as a "Denial of Service" attack.

Another aspect of unethical web scraping comes in what you do with that data. Some people will scrape the contents of a website and post it as their own, in effect stealing this content. This is a big no-no for the same reasons that taking someone else's book and putting your name on it is a bad idea. Intellectual property, copyright and trademark laws still apply on the internet and your legal recourse is much the same. People engaging in web scraping should make every effort to comply with the stated terms of service for a website. Even when in compliance with those terms, you should take special care in ensuring your activity doesn't affect other users of a website.

One of the downsides to screen scraping is it can be a brittle process. Minor changes to the backing website can often leave a scraper completely broken. Herein lies the mechanism for prevention: making changes to the structure of the code of your website can wreak havoc on a screen scraper's ability to extract information. Periodically making changes that are invisible to the user but affect the content of the code being returned is the most effective mechanism to thwart screen scrapers. That said, this is only a set-back. Authors of screen scrapers can always update them and, as there is no technical difference between a computer-backed browser and a human-backed browser, there's no way to 100% prevent access.

Going forward, I expect screen scraping to increase. One of the main reasons for screen scraping is that the underlying website doesn't have a way for programmers to get access to the data they want. As the number of programmers (and the need for programmers) increases over time, so too will the need for data sources. It is unreasonable to expect every company to dedicate the resources to build a programmer-friendly access point. Screen scraping puts the onus of data extraction on the programmer, not the company with the data, which can work out well for all involved.

Source: https://quickleft.com/blog/is-web-scraping-ethical/

How to Build Data Warehouses using Web Scraping

Businesses all over the world are facing an avalanche of information which needs to be collated, organized, analyzed and utilized in an appropriate fashion. Moreover, with each increasing year there is a perceived shortening of the turnaround time for businesses to take decisions based on information they have assimilated. Data Extractors, therefore, have evolved with a more significant role in modern day businesses than just mere collectors or scrapers of unstructured data. They cleanse structure and store contextual data in veritable warehouses, so as to make it available for transformation into useable information as and when the business requires. Data warehouses, therefore, are the curators of information which businesses seek to treasure and to use.

Understanding Data Warehouses

 Traditionally, Data Warehouses have been premised on the concept of getting easy access to readily available data. Modern day usage has helped it to evolve as a rich repository to store current and historical data that can be used to conduct data analysis and generate reports. As it also stores historical data, Data Warehouses are used to generate trending reports to help businesses foresee their prospects. In other words, data warehouses are the modern day crystal balls which businesses zealously pore over to foretell their future in the Industry.

Scraping Web Data for Creating Warehouses

The Web, as we know it, is a rich repository of a whole host of information. However, it is not always easy to access this information for the benefit of our businesses through manual processes. The data extractor tools, therefore, have been built to quickly and easily, scrape, cleanse and structure and store it in Data Warehouses so as to be readily available in a useable format.

Web Scraping tools are variously designed to help both programmers as well as non-programmers to retain their comfort zone while collecting data to create the data warehouses. There are several tools with point and click interfaces that ease out the process considerably. You can simply define the type of data you want and the tool will take care of the rest. Also, most tools such as these are able to store the data in the cloud and therefore do not need to maintain costly hardware or whole teams of developers to manage the repository.

Moreover, as most tools use a browser rendering technology, it helps to simulate the web viewing experience of humans thereby easing the usability aspect among business users facilitating the data extraction and storage process further.

Conclusion

The internet as we know it is stocked with valuable data most of which are not always easy to access. Web Data extraction tools have therefore gained popularity among businesses as they browse, search, navigate simulating your experience of web browsing and finally extract data fields specific to your industry and appropriate to your needs. These are stored in repositories for analysis and generation of reports. Thus evolves the need and utility of Data warehouses. As the process of data collection and organization from unstructured to structured form is automated, there is an assurance of accuracy built into the process which enhances the value and credibility of data warehouses. Web Data scraping is no doubt the value enhancers for Data warehouses in the current scenario.

Source: http://scraping-solutions.blogspot.in/2014/09/how-to-build-data-warehouses-using-web.html