In this digital era, the realms of web scraping and data mining have proved to be dominant tools for mining valuable insights from the enormous online information ocean. However, many get confused with the words and find them similar. But the fact is that both the words are quite different from each other and possess unique definitions as well.
Through today’s article, let’s discover web scraping vs data mining by understanding each term individually, how and in which projects they are used, and much more.
What is Web Scraping?
The procedure of scanning multimedia content or text from certain websites and converting the content to a database or data table that is easy to analyze is termed web scraping. Hence, web scraping is nothing but a form of data extraction. It should also be noted that web scraping doesn’t deliver any kind of business insights until the data collected is properly cleaned, organized, and analyzed.
When there is huge online data available, manual web scraping becomes a little difficult. Hence, advanced web scraping tools are used for the process. The tools automatically read the HTML codes of the website. Yet certain scrapers look for JavaScript and CSS elements for reading and duplicating prohibited or unencrypted data. Using an advanced scraping tool also helps imitate the entire portal’s public content. The tools can also collect particular category databases from CVS or Excel spreadsheets at the time of exporting.
There are various uses of web scraping including academic and financial studies. Businesses might also use these strategies to collect data about competitors, attract customers, create sales leads online, and increase sales. Data obtained from web scraping is mostly repurposed in live applications that need continuous data streaming, marketing campaigns, live price comparisons, weather applications for mobile devices, etc.
What is Data Mining?
The process of analyzing raw data to obtain essential information for anomalies and trends is termed data mining. Such data is obtained from various sources like cookies, online surveys, public records, etc.
There is no particular method when it comes to data mining until the process is carried out legitimately. Data scientists look for an appropriate location for storing and working on the data while they categorize them. However, the process of data mining can be carried out using mathematical models, Excel spreadsheets, etc. for obtaining proper data through coding languages.
Data mining and Web scraping – How are they different?
By now you might have a good idea about data mining vs scraping, yet here is a clear explanation for the same.
Web Scraping | Data Mining | |
1. | Web scraping means assembling and organizing data obtained from web sources in a convenient format. | Data mining means analyzing huge data sets to obtain useful patterns and information. |
2. | It is used for building data sets used for the process of data mining. | It is used for revealing valuable insights and future trends. |
3. | It includes extracting or gathering data | It includes analyzing collected datasets. |
Final Words:
Through this article regarding data mining vs web scraping, it can be known that no doubt, these two terms are different, yet, in the end, the tools possess similar goals and can also be used collectively.
For further details on the same, get in touch with DataPlusValue, a top 3 data mining company globally, and explore data mining and scraping to discover the transformative perspective it carries.