Web scraping, web harvesting, or web data extraction is data scraping used for extracting data from websites.
It is a form of copying, in which specific data is gathered and copied from the web, typically into a central local database or spreadsheet, for later retrieval or analysis.
Web scraping a web page involves fetching it and extracting from it.
Web scraping is used for contact scraping, and as a component of applications used for web indexing, web mining and data mining, online price change monitoring and price comparison, product review scraping (to watch the competition), gathering real estate listings, weather data monitoring, website change detection, research, tracking online presence and reputation, web mashup and, web data integration.
Keep in mind that web scraping may be against the terms of use of some websites.
