Basic web scraping and data visualization using Google Spreadsheets

Google Spreadsheets provides a free, one-stop solution for journalists and researchers to retrieve tabular data from a web page, visualize the data, and embed the visualizations in a news or research report.

There are times when a journalist or researcher needs to incorporate visualized data in a report, and the data reside on a third-party website, in the form of a table. It is tedious and time-consuming to manually copy/paste the table, take care of any formatting issues, find a way to visualize the data, and upload the visualizations somewhere on the web for sharing and embedding.

With a free Google account, in three steps, we can create a spreadsheet, let the spreadsheet retrieve data in that table, perform various visualizations with the retrieved data, and then share the visualizations through different venues.

Step 1: Retrieve (scrape) tabular data

Google Spreadsheets provides a large collection of “functions” that do various things. This tutorial is based on one particular function that retrieves tabular data on a web page; for other spreadsheet functions, please refer to the Google Spreadsheet function list.

Let’s say that in a report about U.S. population, we want to quote state-by-state population data, in the form of an interactive chart, off of the Wikipedia list of U.S. states, which is a table with 12 columns and dozens of rows.

With a new blank spreadsheet, type in the A1 cell (the upper-left cell) the following function code:

This formula tells Google Spreadsheets to go to the said web page, look for tables on that page, and fetch data in the second table. Once I hit the enter key, in a few moments, the blank spreadsheet is populated with data as shown in the screenshot below:

U.S. population

A few notes about this step:

    To scrape data from any other page, copy that web address and paste it within the quotation marks.

    For that number “2″ in the formula – a web page may contain several tables; some are visible, some invisible. If you don’t know how to read HTML source codes and pinpoint the exact table you want to target, then start with 1, and work your way up until the spreadsheet returns the data you want.

    You cannot edit this spreadsheet as it is dynamically linked to the source on that Wiki page. If you delete a column or cell, the spreadsheet will refresh itself with the deleted contents back in place.

    If you do need to edit the data, for instance to create a customized chart of selected columns/rows, you need to make a copy of the spreadsheet. Remember, when you copy/paste to a new spreadsheet, choose edit>paste special>paste values only, so that the new spreadsheet is not linked to the source.

Step 2: Visualize data

Google Spreadsheets provides various visualization tools that we can choose and customize to suit our needs.

For instance, I want to visualize and compare the 2012 estimated population of the top-10 states. To do that, I need to specify the range of cells for the visualization; in this case, it is columns C and D, from row 1 down to row 11 (we need to include the header in row 1).

This range is thus C1:D11, which is a standard way to specify spreadsheet ranges.

(Note: read a Goggle Spreadsheet tutorial for working with cell range and other spreadsheet features)

On the spreadsheet menu bar, click on the “Insert chart” button (third from right); in the Chart Editor pop-up window, there are three tabs where we can customize the chart:

    chart-editorUnder the Start tab, change the data range to Sheet1!C1:D11; leave other options as is, and make sure “use row 1 as headers” is checked. Based on the data type, the spreadsheets has a few recommended charts; I selected the bar chart.

    Click the Chart tab and explore other types of charts; charts not compatible with the current data set are not available (grayed out).

    Click the Customize tab; here, among others, give the chart a title, and scroll down to change the default names of the vertical axis and the horizontal axis.

    Click Insert and the chart will be shown on top of the spreadsheet; click upper-right corner of the chart window, click the drop-down menu and choose “move to own sheet.” The chart will be shown in a separate sheet with a default name of “Chart 1.”

Step 3: Share chart visualizations

By default, the spreadsheet is private, meaning it is only visible to its creator. For others to view our chart, we need to change the sharing settings: Click on the blue “Share” button on the upper-right corner; in the pop-up window, under “who has access,” click on “change” next to the “private” option, choose either “public on the web” or “anyone with the link,”  click Save then Done.

Click File>Publish to the web; in the pop-up window, under “Get a link to the published data,” there are a few options:

    Click in the first box and you will see a group of options for how you can share the data/chart. For our purpose, we want to embed the interactive chart in this blog post, so I selected “HTML to embed in a page.”

    Click in the “All sheets” box and choose “Chart 1,” which is the one that holds the chart.

In the next box, select and copy the codes, paste them to the HTML editor of a blog post or web page, and an interactive chart will be shown as the one below; notice that in the original codes, the default dimensions are 500 pixels wide and 300 pixels tall; I changed it to 650*450 for display in this blog post.

It should be noted that in some browsers, an embedded chart may have unsightly scroll bars along the right and the bottom borders. I have not been able to find a fix, but we can always embed a chart image which is automatically generated and doesn’t have scroll bars. All we need to do is to click “publish chart” on the sheet that holds the chart; in the pop-up window, select “image” as the publish format, copy the link and paste it to a blog post or web page.

Source:http://www.mulinblog.com/basic-web-scraping-data-visualization-using-google-spreadsheets/

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Source:http://www.escortlyfe.com/showthread.php?tid=57073

Tools for Data Scraping and Visualization

Over the last few weeks I co-taught a short-course on data scraping and data presentation for.  It was a pleasure to get a chance to teach with Ethan Zuckerman (my boss) and interact with the creative group of students! You can peruse the syllabus outline if you like.

In my Data Therapy work I don’t usually introduce tools, because there are loads of YouTube tutorials and written tutorials.  However, while co-teaching a short-course for incoming students in the Comparative Media Studies program here at MIT, I led two short “lab” sessions on tools for data scraping, interrogation, and visualization.

There are a myriad of tools that support these efforts, so I was forced to pick just a handle to introduce to these students.  I wanted to share the short lists of tools I choose to share.

Data Scraping:

As much as possible, avoid writing code!  Many of these tools can help you avoid writing software to do the scraping.  There are constantly new tools being built, but I recommend these:

   1.Copy/Paste: Never forget the awesome power of copy/paste! There are many times when an hour of copying and pasting will be faster than learning any sort of new tool!
  
   2.Import.io: Still nascent, but this is a radical re-thinking of how you scrape.  Point and click to train their scraper.  It’s very early, and buggy, but on many simple webpages it works well!
  
   3.Regular Expressions: Install a text editor like Sublime Text and you get the power of regular expressions (which I call “Super Find and Replace”).  It lets you define a pattern and find it in any large document.  Sure the pattern definition is cryptic, but learning it is totally worth it (here’s an online playground).
  
   4.Jquery in the browser: Install the bookmarklet, and you can add the JQuery javascript library to any webpage you are viewing.  From there you can use a basic understanding of javascript and the Javascript console (in most browsers) to pull parts of a webpage into an array.
  
   5.ScraperWiki: There are a few things this makes really easy – getting recent tweets, getting twitter followers, and a few others.  Otherwise this is a good engine for software coding.
  
   6.Software Development: If you are a coder, and the website you need to scrape has javascript and logins and such, then you might need to go this route (ugh).  If so, here’s a functioning example of a scraper built in Python (with Beautiful Soup and Mechanize).  I would use Watir if you want to do this in Ruby.

Data Interrogation and Visualization:

There are even more tools that help you here.  I picked a handful of single-purpose tools, and some generic ones to share.

   1.Tabula: There are  few PDF-cleaning tools, but this one has worked particularly well for me.  If your data is in a PDF, and selectable, then I recommend this! (disclosure: the Knight Foundation funds much of my paycheck, and contributed to Tabula’s development as well)

   2.OpenRefine: This data cleaning tool lets you do things like cluster rows in your data that are spelled similarly, look for correlations at a high level, and more!  The School of Data has written well about this – read their OpenRefine handbook.

   3.Wordle: As maligned as word clouds have been, I still believe in their role as a proxy for deep text analysis.  They give a nice visual representation of how frequently words appear in quotes, writing, etc.

   4.Quartz ChartBuilder: If you need to make clean and simple charts, this is the tool for you. Much nicer than the output of Excel.

   5.TimelineJS: Need an online timeline?  This is an awesome tool. Disclosure: another Knight-funded project.

   6.Google Fusion Tables: This tool has empowered loads of folks to create maps online.  I’m not a big user, but lots of folks recommend it to me.

   7.TileMill: Google maps isn’t the only way to make a map.  TileMill lets you create beautiful interactive maps that fit your needs. Disclosure: another Knight-funded project.

   8.Tableau Public: Tableau is a much nicer way to explore your data than Excel pivot tables.  You can drag and drop columns onto a grid and it suggests visualizations that might be revealing in your attempts to find stories.

I hope those are helpful in your data scraping and story-finding adventures!

Source:http://datatherapy.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/tools-for-data-scraping-and-presentation/

What Is OCR Conversion Solutions?

Optical Character Recognition system on laser and inkjet printers usually print media copies of the books and computer systems work most effective with the pictures. Some documents are not appropriate for conversion to editable formatting. Smidgen of them is handwritten or hand-stamped plates are not appropriate for automated processing. Annotation and cross-outs to make a high error rate in the web page.

Furthermore, a combination of text, photographs and pictures to the recognition dilemma, but generally be corrected with some manual adjustments. Contrast, color definition and clarity, optimal final results will not be lost in old documents to scan. In addition, faxes and dot matrix printer generated pages generally poor to deliver final results. Printed copies typed on a typewriter with a worn tire, carbon light with optical character recognition sheet with characters and copies do not make excellent final results.

By the finish of the 1980s, typewriters had been replaced by laptop word processing applications. Many archive a large quantity of typewritten pages. Lightweight paper stocks that enhance or wrinkle, scanner jamming is an additional issue that may possibly. other option is to capture a digital camera files.In such circumstances it is more quickly and much more accurate to enter data manually. On the other hand, OCR scanning Excel spreadsheet format are delimited with tabs for sheets that functions properly.

Comma-separated worth – CSV tabular data must closely resemble the tab. Unsuitable for circumstances where the OCR application, is a greater option manual data entry. Automatic processing implies to go back and save when you require making pretty accurate. It is pretty simple to repair proper the initial time. You will locate that the offshore BPO services (Organization Process Outsourcing Services) with a scanning project outsourcing enterprise is both a timely and economical solutions will be surprised.

The low cost of offshore labor, which is manual is due to a greater and cost forms.OCR and file conversions in different digital formats that can be gebruikt.OCR access to info in the management of what are the pros and cons? OCR readable and printable paper copies of the file for the conversion to a digital format. Rich Text Format, MS Word, PDF and HTML text is the most popular kind through a scanner, OCR application converts. The converted documents simple to manage, edit, and are In enterprise-oriented present age; to readily out there dot matrix printer and quickly accessible format to convert the data to dot matrix printer determine every enterprise is a frequent requirement.

Outsourcing Information Conversion Services tiresome data conversion jobs done immediately and effectively is a cost dot matrix printer successful manner. Managing the quantity of info is time consuming and hard process. Many providers normally locate it hard to concentrate on their core enterprise. Therefore, the data conversion functions to the line speed at which tasks are outsourced to an offshore land.

The stipulated time and price range. Now, the BPO providers in a quantity of high quality, economical for consumers around the planet in delivering data conversion solutions. All enterprise course of action outsourcing providers in the infrastructure and the most up-to-date technology and are equipped with skilled and experienced. The conversion of electronic data from its present kind, these providers separate conversion device, the conversion to build safer and much more reputable.

Source:http://www.joseoshays.com/what-is-ocr-conversion-solutions/

CATHEDRAL India: Outsource Services for Better Optimization

Or the present scenario, every company needs to website for better exposure to connect with or targeted audience. Or is the most affordable and fastest way to reach people globally. But or this highly competitive was, or becomes very difficult to survive. CATHEDRAL services or search engine optimization services have become to requirement for every company to you generate you traffic for your website. The technique needs expertise, knowledge and command over the advanced techniques.

Optimizing the website there you are become the need of every business. Creating to website according to the algorithm of the search engine becomes essential to give other websites huge competition. The optimizing experts analyze the updates and algorithms of the search engine and prosper.

This process needs to hand full amount to set up the business, I am mostly companies outsource the services. Ace far ace cost effectiveness and quality is concerned, India you have emerge ace the best outsourcing service providing destination.

The advantages of selecting India for outsourcing search engine optimization services:-

After OR.S, India is the second largest country with to loosen number of people who speaks English. Even they have to huge number of people who have skills or using the internet tools. The knowledge, expertise and ample human resource have made India ace one of the most favorable destinations for outsourcing the CATHEDRAL services. There till many other reasons too.

Affordable: the leading companies can save to lot of money by outsourcing their work from offshore country. The competitive prices provided by India makes the country ahead or providing outsourcing services. CATHEDRAL services India is optimized by the professionals. There till many talented experts who till providing skillful results.

One stop sign solution: The companies India, which provide outsourcing services to the client, offer to one stop sign solution to them. Starting from the website designing and web maintenance, the company provides go absolution solution to optimize the site. You can outsource the work to the talented hands and invest your swindle on something else.

Effective services: The offshore companies provide talented human resource who is expert or this field. The companies wounds optimizers who till well educated and can able to offer better services to the clients. They gave not compromise with the quality of the services provided by the outsourcing companies.

Customized services: The companies provide services according to the need of the client. You can customize your demands and the company will give or best to make you achieve your goal. They even provide multilingual services I am that people, who can’t read English, can reach your website and get recognized with your product and services.

CATHEDRAL outsourcing business have flourished or India due to or quality of work, dedication towards providing the best services, professionalism, affordability and expertise through experience. If you want to outsource your services, then nothing can beat the services provided by CATHEDRAL India, ace or is to promising company or terms of search engine optimization services.

Source:http://why-outsource.net/cathedral-india-outsource-services-for-better-optimization/

Basic of Search Engine Optimization

 Web presence is like an elementary identity for your business. But nowadays, just having a website didn’t work alone. You must have to follow all the proper SEO guidelines for your website to ameliorate its page ranking on various popular search engines to attract more users. There are some very decisive basic rules must be followed to attain SEO benefits and hiring an experienced company for SEO services will certainly help you to hit the bull’s eye.Â

Have you ever noticed that whenever you pass a certain query or keyword in a search engine, it follows with a number of results from top to bottom? What makes those results to be there is search engine optimization (SEO). If you have a website with several descriptions about your products and services, do you think it’s enough to promote and develop your business further? Currently, we are in an era of extremely advanced technology which has provided us with a number of marvellous techniques and features that developing your business online is just a step away. SEO has changed a lot in a past few years and consequently becomes a little complicated to deal with if you are not updated to its every aspect.

The most common search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing, they all use a special algorithm to rank your page in their search results. If you want to be one among the top search results, you must have to follow all the techniques of SEO. There are certain things to be taken care of while following the SEO guidelines. Every page on your website must have a unique title tag with somewhere around 70-75 words and it must be informative in order to let users know about your products and services. Secondly, choosing more relevant keywords for search results will certainly get you more users and will be useful for them to know about you.

Hiring a decent and dexterous SEO service provider empowers you to have a great website ranking and hence a considerable amount of traffic. There are a number of SEO companies in Delhi providing considerable services to nourish your business perspectives. One of the most fundamental concepts which is extremely important for your site is having fresh, precise and unique content. This is a pretty decisive factor because all the search engines follow several strict parameters for copied content. Moreover, the selected relevant keywords must be properly stuffed into the content in a proper ratio as per the SEO guidelines. One another important step is to build internal links between pages of your website that connects assorted pieces of content.

Generally, with such an increased stiff competition, having an SEO compatible website is what you need the most. For SEO Delhi you can consult a number of befitting organizations available to have a perfect and desired page ranking to generate huge amount of traffic for your website. All you have to do is taking the right decision by choosing an ideal SEO service provider for your website and the rest will be handled by them. From the selection of appropriate keywords, writing relevant content, building internal links and all other required tasks will be accomplished by them.

Source:http://why-outsource.net/basic-of-search-engine-optimization/

How to make website scraping easy

We thought we'd also go 'back to basics' and explain how retailers can simplify their data extraction process.

Web scraping is a way of extracting data from websites. Rich data extraction ensures that the most comprehensive product information is extracted from the retailer’s ecommerce site.

This ensures that the data remains accurate and up-to-date and leaves less room for error.

Why is web scraping important?

If retailers want to increase their product visibility and display their product inventory across the various channels, data extraction is essential. There are several ways of extracting site data, but one of the most common is screen scraping.

Screen scraping is carried out by a crawler that is sent onto an ecommerce site to capture specific data. This extracted data is then put together to create a product data feed.

Why are websites scraped?

Scraping makes data extraction much easier for retailers. Most of them have complex CMS systems, so their website is usually the only place where all of their product information comes together.

How can retailers improve their site so it’s easy to scrape?

Use IDs and classes within tags

If a website uses IDs and classes within its page tags, it’s much easier to produce Xpaths (the query language for selecting nodes), which are used to navigate through HTML.

Don’t use tables for structuring

If a site’s structure includes a lot of tables, it becomes more difficult to scrape. This is because there are unlikely to be IDs and classes within the table’s data.

Not only this, but when tables are used, the Xpaths can become much longer and are therefore more likely to break.

Don’t use unnecessary AJAX

AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML)tends to load independently from HTML, meaning that it can be missed in the scraping process.

Although the browser does drive content and the HTML does load, sometimes something else will pop up. Though a crawler can be set to wait for AJAX content to load before scraping, any AJAX can still dramatically increase the scraping time.

Avoid using sessions

Unnecessary sessions make it difficult to deep link products and can also make the website difficult to scrape.

This is most common on travel website pages, as search URLs sometimes use sessions, causing them to timeout or expire after a period of time.

Be consistent

Crawlers are programmed to recognise each type of webpage based on its structure; if site pages are inconsistent, the crawler will return invalid results.

So, for example, if the crawler is expecting to find the product price under a particular HTML tag class or id and the client introduces a new product page where the price is located under an unfamiliar HTML tag class or id, the product is likely to be overlooked.

Make sure your website is compliant

All websites should comply with W3C standards, which lays out standards that developers need to adhere to. It’s also best to have well-formed HTML so that Xpaths can be created easily.

For example, if an HTML tag is not closed off properly, it can affect the structure of the site.

Keep your website accessible

Even in its simplest form, your website should be compatible with each of the various internet browsers.

So, even if a user has content blockers switched on, the website should still load. This also makes it much easier to scrape the product data.

Source: http://econsultancy.com/in/blog/63375-how-to-make-website-scraping-easy

Google data scraping for SEO

Whether you agree or not, search engine optimization (SEO) has come a long way since its origination that had revolutionized internet search methods. SEO - a lot depends on planning and strategizing according to the historical data available. Competitor analysis is a significant part of SEO that helps the analyst in determining what is and what not is working for their competitor and how to fine tune his own approach towards it.

Google data scraping or data scraping is about extracting data from web pages, i.e. HTML and XML files in identifying the key components that would influence site performance. Data scraping works on extracting information like keyword, Meta tags, titles, content classifications and ad copies of competitors.

Data extraction has been made possible with sophisticated scraping tools that can perform expert task in extracting information from different websites and web platforms. Data scraping helps with comparing your site’s performance against your competitors across web platforms and therefore, is crucial for SEO analysis. To be honest, the need to rank high in search results is imperative for your website to receive organic traffic and hence, rank monitoring is an important determinant of your website performance.

The type of data scraping tool you need, Google Maps Scraper, Amazon Screen Scraping or LinkedIn Extractor, would be determined by your inherent requirements but you can’t ignore its requirement in extracting valuable information that would help improving website performance to put your venture on the right path of growth.

Source: http://scrappingexperts.blogspot.in/2013/10/google-data-scraping-for-seo.html

Google may drop screen scraping of TripAdvisor and Yelp content to get government off its back

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) may end its antitrust investigation of Google’s search business by letting the company make voluntary changes, “such as limiting use of restaurant and travel reviews from other websites,” according to sources who spoke with Politico and Bloomberg News.

The official decision is expected to be made public as soon as this week, according to the New York Times Bits blog.

Bye-bye, screen scraping

Two sources told Politico that the company had agreed to abstain from screen scraping synopses of reviews from other sites, such as TripAdvisor and Yelp, and stop incorporating them in its search results. (The company has already made some concessions. Last year, it scaled back using “snippets” of text from other sites in its results related to local businesses.)

Google would also commit to simplify the process for advertisers to port their rates and bidding data to rival advertising networks, such as Microsoft’s Bing. That means the company will make it easier for users of Google AdWords “to compare data from ad campaigns with their performance on other Internet search engines,” says Bloomberg.

The company will apparently also stop signing exclusive agreements with sites to use and promote Google’s search service.

A potential big win for Google

The probe is going Google’s way, if he reports of voluntary concessions are true. The company will have dodged a consent decree—a judge-approved deal that would have empowered the FTC to supervise specific Google search practices for a set period.

On the other hand, the deal could translate into a major concession by Google to content companies, such as TripAdvisor and Yelp. For years, Google has insisted that it has the right to copy and paste summaries from other sites, such as ratings and review excerpts.

Critics say the company uses these summaries in its search results to tip the scales in favor of its own products, an issue that’s become of more concern with Google having purchased and begun displaying travel content from ITA Software, Frommers, Zagat and other companies.

Apparently federal investigators are afraid they can’t prove that consumers are harmed by how the company ranks its search engine result pages (SERPs), according to an earlier report by Bloomberg. The company seems to be effective in its argument that the cost for consumers to switch to rival sources of information, such as Expedia or TripAdvisor is nothing.

Critics, including Fairsearch.org, had complained that that Google puts its own reviews, maps and services at the top of its results pages, a prime spot that draws most of users’ clicks.

There’s also apparently a lack of damning e-mails or other evidence that Google executives are deliberately trying to use its leverage to harm competitors. This may be the more crucial point. In the words of The New York Times, “the legal issue is the tactics the dominant company employs to expand its empire.”

As Tnooz has noted, Google hired 13 communications and lobbying firms to help fend off antitrust challenges. Critics insist there have been irregularities in how the FTC has handled its probe.

Source:http://tripadvisordatascraping.blogspot.in/2013/04/google-may-drop-screen-scraping-of.html

Using Yelp to Promote Your Business

If you have a business and you want to increase your exposure, then a great way in which to do so is with Yelp. Yelp is an online directory where people go when they are trying to decide what they want to do, where they want to go, or what business they want to use for whatever.

Because the world that now exists is an 'on the move' world, Yelp is great to use in conjunction with your business as more and more people are looking for what they need on the fly with their smartphones. Look at it this way, people are going to select somewhere to buy what they are after so you might as well throw your hat in the ring.

What makes Yelp unique in promoting your business is the fact that it is driven by customer reviews. So, the better your services are, the better your reviews will be and the more people will come to trust you as an authority in your niche market.

Best of all, Yelp is free to register with and only take a little bit of time in order to do so. Here are some pointers you can use when you are utilizing Yelp to promote your business:

• Be Thorough: Be sure you fill out all the available data so that you have the best chance of snagging potential customers. If you fail to fill out all your admin pages in full, your Yelp ad will look bad and potential customers are likely to go on to your competition. Use current information and be sure it is kept up to date.

• Advertise Offers and Specials: A great feature with Yelp is the ability to advertise discounts and specials to potential customers. Using this will have your offers show up in the 'Announcements and Offers' directory giving you an instant advantage over your completion that is not using Yelp.

• Address Problems: Should you get a negative comment on Yelp, they allow you the ability to respond. Do so in a professional manner and stick to the facts so you can still come out of a negative comment smelling like roses and show others your ability to solve potential problems.

• Use Badges: Yelp also allows you to add badges to your website or your blog sites. Use these badges everywhere you can think of online as they will be linked to your Yelp page and will allow potential customers to click and view what others are saying about you on Yelp. As long as you are running your business ship-shape, then this type of activity can only help you.

Using Yelp is a great way to get a leg up on your completion. While Yelp is not such a secret anymore, you can still take advantage of what they have to offer by making sure you please your customers every time. By doing so, you will grow your positive comments and this will set you apart from those who either have no Yelp account or have one, but do not groom it in the same manner as you do.

Suorce:http://ezinearticles.com/?Using-Yelp-to-Promote-Your-Business&id=6051442

Collecting Data With Web Scrapers

There is a large amount of data available only through websites. However, as many people have found out, trying to copy data into a usable database or spreadsheet directly out of a website can be a tiring process. Data entry from internet sources can quickly become cost prohibitive as the required hours add up. Clearly, an automated method for collating information from HTML-based sites can offer huge management cost savings.

Web scrapers are programs that are able to aggregate information from the internet. They are capable of navigating the web, assessing the contents of a site, and then pulling data points and placing them into a structured, working database or spreadsheet. Many companies and services will use programs to web scrape, such as comparing prices, performing online research, or tracking changes to online content.

Let's take a look at how web scrapers can aid data collection and management for a variety of purposes.

Improving On Manual Entry Methods

Using a computer's copy and paste function or simply typing text from a site is extremely inefficient and costly. Web scrapers are able to navigate through a series of websites, make decisions on what is important data, and then copy the info into a structured database, spreadsheet, or other program. Software packages include the ability to record macros by having a user perform a routine once and then have the computer remember and automate those actions. Every user can effectively act as their own programmer to expand the capabilities to process websites. These applications can also interface with databases in order to automatically manage information as it is pulled from a website.

Aggregating Information

There are a number of instances where material stored in websites can be manipulated and stored. For example, a clothing company that is looking to bring their line of apparel to retailers can go online for the contact information of retailers in their area and then present that information to sales personnel to generate leads. Many businesses can perform market research on prices and product availability by analyzing online catalogues.

Data Management

Managing figures and numbers is best done through spreadsheets and databases; however, information on a website formatted with HTML is not readily accessible for such purposes. While websites are excellent for displaying facts and figures, they fall short when they need to be analyzed, sorted, or otherwise manipulated. Ultimately, web scrapers are able to take the output that is intended for display to a person and change it to numbers that can be used by a computer. Furthermore, by automating this process with software applications and macros, entry costs are severely reduced.

This type of data management is also effective at merging different information sources. If a company were to purchase research or statistical information, it could be scraped in order to format the information into a database. This is also highly effective at taking a legacy system's contents and incorporating them into today's systems.

Overall, a web scraper is a cost effective user tool for data manipulation and management.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Collecting-Data-With-Web-Scrapers&id=4223877

Scraper Pro Gold - The Secret to ENDLESS Leads!

There are a number of reasons that home-based businesses fail today but the primary reason is insufficient lead generation. If you asked the average home-based business owner if they would benefit from having an unlimited source of sales leads available with just the click of their mouse, they would answer with a resounding "YES!" Fortunately, there is an answer to the dilemma where sales lead generation is concerned. It's called Scraper Pro Gold and it is one of the most unique yet effective sales lead generation systems on the market today.

The software enables you to harvest sales leads from the internet by using different targeted keywords. As an example of how this works, you can type in the keywords "home-based business" the Scraper Pro Gold system will pull in dozens of leads from a number of directories and search engines that relates to the keywords you entered. Additionally, you can use the names of different MLM products as keywords in order to obtain a list of their distributors which opens up more sales avenues for you.

Click Here to watch the Scraper Pro Gold video that we have posted there. Once you implement the system, you will be amazed at how quickly you will obtain hundreds of FREE sales leads which oftentimes include e-mail addresses, fax numbers, and phone numbers. You basically start contacting these leads asking them the question "Would your business be more successful if you had an unlimited source of FREE sales leads for life?" You can also contact home-based business owners as well.

Naturally, they are going to tell you "YES" which will give you an opportunity to discuss how the Scraper Pro Gold system works. This is by far the easiest software that you can use and operate. You simply type in the keywords, then choose the directories and search engines (as well as the states) that you want to target. After that, just let the system run and see how you will never have to purchase any sales leads again. It's just that simple.

You're probably wondering "if the system is so great, why do you want to share it with others?" The main reason is that the company that created and developed the Scraper Pro Gold software system has created an outstanding referral program that you will quickly benefit from, along with the multitude of leads! If you visit the scraper pro gold website here, you can learn more about this amazing system and get started generating unlimited FREE sales leads TODAY!

Best of all, there is only a one-time fee for marketing this program and starting to generate hundreds, if not thousands, of ongoing sales leads. You can create revenue in one of two ways with the Scraper Pro Gold system. You can either contact your leads and start telling them about the primary program, or you can sell the program to others if you want. One way or the other, you're going to generate an unlimited amount of leads and start benefiting from the system immediately!

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Scraper-Pro-Gold---The-Secret-to-ENDLESS-Leads!&id=5106877

Corporate Website Development Marketing Tips

Corporate website development is much more than just creating your website and putting it online. When developing your site you must consider marketing as a foundation to the development of your online presence. Businesses who fail to approach development from a marketing mind often find themselves dissatisfied with results of their site.

Corporate Marketing Tips

These are a few things to consider when developing your site that you want to make sure you communicate with your developer. Remember, often times people who develop or build websites are good at the technical aspect of the process but have minimal knowledge as to the successful marketing implementation.

1.Prominent and focused call to action - this is the process of leading your visitor down a path that is predefined by you. Most websites fail to guide the visitor down a specific path, which results in a site that does not perform as it should. An example of this could be a video that invites the visitor to put in their information to receive something of value. Additionally, it could be as simple as direct verticals that is has clear navigation and specific action.
   
2.Social media integration - the online world has drastically changed with social media being a driving force effecting the way we communicate and validate as a culture. This corporate website development marketing tip is critical if you want to engage your visitor. Social media integration can drastically increase your marketing results as other people share and approve of your content.
   
3.Blog Integration - this is a must for any new corporate development. This concept is foreign to most businesses as they don't understand the value in having a blog integrated on their corporate site. There are many reasons why a blog should be included. A few main reasons include, adding value to the visitor, giving people a reason to come back to your site, creating relevance in the search engine and increasing website authority.
   
4.Niche Keyword Research - this is a major downfall of most online development companies. They are able to make a nice looking site, however, they fail to understand the importance of developing the corporate website around the keyword research. Think of keyword research as the foundation, just as if you were to build a sky scraper, the strength of that structure begins with laying the proper foundation.

These are just a few of the important marketing tips to consider when developing your corporate website. Focusing on these will position your site ahead of those in your market who don't understand successful online asset development.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Corporate-Website-Development-Marketing-Tips&id=6087459

Promoting Your Website Through Writing Articles

One of the most popular methods of helping your website is through the writing of articles and then publishing them on websites / ezines who allow articles to be submitted. There are several things to bear in mind for the successful use of articles.

1. For articles to have the best effect they should not be duplicated on your site. If you submit articles already on your site, you will lose the unique content from your site. Unfortunately this approach does mean hard work. If you write a good article it seems a shame not to have it your own site as well. One approach I would suggest is that if you wanted to promote "yoga exercises" I would first create good pages and articles about "yoga exercises". I would put these on my own site. (Before promoting a site you should make sure there is something worthwhile promoting). Then I would write an article specifically for the purpose of promoting this site with appropriate links. This means no matter how many times the article gets copied you will not get any duplicated content issues and not be associated with "scraper sites"

2. Of course there are no hard and fast rules, some people have said they have reproduced their own articles without any adverse consequences. Also it may depend on your goals of writing articles. If it is really good article publishing it in more than one place may give you the benefit of having many people reading it. However I would be careful about doing this too much, especially since Google is likely to be working to devalue this SEO technique.

3. If you want to promote a site on "yoga exercises" make sure you write articles on a related theme. This might be general articles on yoga, meditation, personal well being e.t.c. Links will only be valued when they come from sites and articles with the keywords you want to promote.

4. Related to the above point is developments from Google. Google is working hard to stop "google bombing". Remember the days when "miserable failure" used to return a page on an American President? Now it is no longer does, Google is increasingly suspicious of links from unrelated pages. Thus if you link to your yoga site from an article on "Varieties of English Cheeses during the late medieval period of 1600-1700". Google will probably view your yoga links as "link spam". It is not inconceivable your site may get a bad reputation with Google if you do this too much.

5. Correct linking from your article. Usually ezines allow 1 or 2 links in your article to your own site. To get the most benefit from link I would suggest this:

a) link anchor text of a keyword you wish to promote "yoga exercises" or "guide to yoga"

b) It is also useful to have one link as the site URL make it a live link. This means even if other sites strip out html you will still have a link.

c) Vary links. Don't always use the same resource box. Google likes natural links. Change the anchor link text, link to different pages. Don't just link to the homepage. The key is variety.

d) Putting links in the main body of the article will reduce the chance of it being copied by other sites. However for some articles I will still add a link in middle of text because these are more valuable than links at bottom.

6. The key to success is to write an article that other website will want to copy this will give you the widest exposure and maximum number of links. Good articles are informative, simple and easy to read. They are not ego driven. Also don't make a blatant sales pitch in your article. As Christopher Knight of  says "You are aiming to promote your article not your site"

7. Make sure your title has good keywords. It should be at least 3-4 words and be descriptive of your article. If the keywords are good it will improve your chance of getting good Google ranking for the article. In turn this will increase the chance of it getting copied by other sites.

8. Do try to have a good quality article so that it gets copied by good quality websites. There is little if any benefit from it being copied by many of the scrapper sites. (sites which offer no unique content but just copy others and then add Google adsense)

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Promoting-Your-Website-Through-Writing-Articles&id=434948