Automation is the Key to Web Scraper Software

If anyone must access hundreds of websites to gather information, doing it manually is a primitive and outdated method. Automation makes life easier as one can see from the popularity of cars with automatic transmission and Google is working on a car that drives by itself. There is a lesson here somewhere that one can take inspiration from if obtaining information from the web is important for studies, for journalism, for marketing or for hobbies.

Users can typically imagine what an automatic process should be like. When they get web scraper software, it is automatic, intuitive and intelligent enough to mimic human thought process. Users install the software, launch it, enter URLs and command line options and schedule the software to run at specified time or time intervals. The software does it all.

Another bugbear for most users of data is that once they download information it must be stripped of code or text and refined into a proper format. Here again automation plays a vital role. The tool converts data into the required format be it .dbf, .csv, .txt, HTML or XML.

There are times when users simply cannot extract data straightaway. Websites require them to log in before allowing access. Automation in the software does away with all these cumbersome processes and gets the required data with minimum of fuss.

Automation is the key to progress, productivity and efficiency, all of which are easily achieved when a web scraper is used. What would take days or weeks is achieved overnight and with minimum human intervention.