Web Scraping and Competitive Intelligence

Web Scraping and Competitive Intelligence

Wouldn't it be wonderful if there web scraping is the next natural evolution of big data. The technique involves an automated system of pulling large amounts of data from websites, before putting them together in a useful manner as a way that your business could have access to the information on what your competition was up to?
Well, let’s rephrase that. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a legal way to know what your competition is doing?
There is. All you have to do is visit your competitors as a customer, and you’ll easily find out what they’re offering, the prices, the time-scale, and their information. Web scraping can offer you a quick and efficient way to leave your competition in the rearview mirror.
Automated data scraping uses web crawlers to scour the internet for various search terms in the raw data of public websites. It then presents the information in a way that is easy to understand and, more vitally, easy to use.
This is a great way to keep on top of your competition, giving you a sharp market edge.

How to Web Scrape for Competitive Intelligence

Web scraping can be used for a huge range of searches. Price analysis, product searching, and website changes can be found through web searches.
Web scraping can help you keep track of any information that might be relevant to you, based on the actions of your competitors and the conversations of customers.
For example, if an online travel agency company wants to use competitive intelligence with data scraping, they might consider searching for the number of routes of a specific airline, the average price, the length of time, the cities in between. In fact, data you can collect includes (but is by no means limited to):

  • Real-time price and product updates
  • More in-depth customer information
  • Reviews and feedback on products and services
  • Popular bloggers and influence's in your sphere

Why Use Web Scraping for Competitive Intelligence

Competitive intelligence requires the ability to collect, analyze, and then use information about your market in order to your competitive advantage.
Web scraping is a process of collecting and compiling this information in an easy-to-read way. But if you don’t have the team or resources to dedicate to data scraping, then this is where Scrapfly can help.
With a simple-to-use dashboard, and the ability to offer you customizable and specific search criteria, you are free to take the data that you want and use it in a way that makes sense for your company.
If web scraping is great for competitive intelligence, then Scrapfly can help make your competitive intelligence smarter.

Further reading on our Blog

Web Scraping and Business Automation

Web Scraping and Business Automation

Moving data around companies is a vital part of running a modern business.

Marketing Research

Marketing Research

Web scraping is a technique with many names - data scraping, data mining, web crawling, screen scraping. However, whatever you want to call it, the essence of it remains the same.

Finance

Finance

If you're hoping to harness the power of information, the natural next step is looking beyond internal data to gauge the financial landscape.

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