1. Three things to be careful when everyone tries crawling
Recently, crawling is essential in software education courses at academies or online education sites.
Crawling, which is a technology that must be included in big data analysis courses, may not collect even 10% of the desired data if developed hastily. Even after investing a lot of time in development, there is a possibility of facing losses due to discovering problems later.
Let's first learn about crawling and why it is claimed that only 10% of the data can be collected, and then explore how to solve that problem.
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What is Crawling?
Crawling or scraping is the act of bringing a web page as it is and extracting data from it. The software that crawls is called a crawler.
Now let's look at what to be careful about when developing a crawler.
1) Is Python the best choice?
Python is mainly used in data analysis, so most textbooks and educational programs use Python to create crawlers. However, it is not necessary to use Python. Our company, Hashscraper, is developing using Ruby.
Choosing Python, a widely used language, is a good choice if the goal is achieved. In an era where "know where" is more important than know-how, choosing a language that makes it easy to solve problems through search is a smart choice. (But still, I chose Ruby for its simplicity and convenience)
2) IP Blocking
When you diligently type and understand while creating a crawler after reading a book, it works well at first. However, when collecting data from large-scale sites, you may encounter situations like the following:
- Access is blocked
- Login is required
- CAPTCHA appears
- Redirected to the wrong page
Since the web server knows your IP, if you request web pages at short intervals, your IP may be blocked for a certain period.
How can you solve IP blocking? You need more IPs. It's a simple but realistically difficult method.
Therefore, Hashscraper has been collecting data using multiple AWS EC2 instances for about 3 years. Additionally, depending on the amount of data to be collected, AutoScaling technology is applied to automatically increase or decrease the number of servers.
Servers that repeat continuous failures shut down on their own, create new instances, and use newly assigned IPs.
3) IP Distribution
There are quite a few places that use EC2 like Hashscraper to crawl, and some specific servers have blocked the entire EC2 IP range. Therefore, they secure "clean" IPs through domestic hosting companies and utilize Proxy IP servers when necessary.
2. Conclusion
For tasks or data collection for reports, creating a basic crawler is sufficient.
However, if you want to utilize it for work (marketing, trend analysis, basic platform data, influencer search, etc.), we recommend establishing a proper crawling system.
Also read this article:
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