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
Growth Hacking
While the term might not be familiar to everybody, website scraping has been used by digital marketers since before the phrase was even coined. Which makes it one of the oldest growth hacks in the book.
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.
Data Enrichment
We all know that a picture says a thousand words, but what story is your data telling you? Anything? Or is it just sitting there, waiting for you to do something with it?
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