Why Common Measures Taken To Prevent Scraping Aren't Effective

Bots became more powerful in 2014. As the war continues, let’s take a closer look at why common strategies to prevent scraping didn’t pay off.

With the market for online businesses expanding rapidly, the development teams behind these online portals are under great amounts of pressure to keep up in the race. Scalability, availability and responsiveness are some of the commonly faced problems for a growing online business portal. As the value of content is increasing, content theft has become an increasing problem in the form of web scraping.

Competitors have learned to stay ahead of the race by using bots to scrape. While how these bots could be harmful is something worth talking about, it is not the main scope of this article. This article discusses some of the commonly used weapons to fight bots and brings to light their effectiveness in reality.

We come across many developers who claim to have taken measures to prevent their sites from being scraped. A common belief is that these below listed techniques reduce scraping activities significantly on a website. While some of these methods could actually work in concept, we were interested to explore how effective they were in practice.

Most Commonly used techniques to Prevent Scraping:

•    Setting up robots.txt – Surprisingly, this technique is used against malicious bots! Why this wouldn’t work is pretty straight forward – robots.txt is an agreement between websites and search engine bots to prevent search engine bots from accessing sensitive information. No malicious bot (or the scraper behind it) in it’s right mind would obey robots.txt. This is the most ineffective method to prevent scraping.

•    Filtering requests by User agent – The user agent string of a client is set by the client itself. One method is to obtain this from the HTTP header of a request. This way, a request can be filtered even before the content is served to the request. We observed that very few bots (approximately less than 10%), used the default user agent string which belonged to a scraping tool or was an empty string. Once their requests to the website were filtered based on the user agent, it didn’t take too long for scrapers to realize this and change their user agent to that of any well known browser. This method merely stops new bots written by inexperienced scrapers for a few hours.

•    Blacklisting the IP address – Seeking out to an IP blacklisting service is much easier than having to perform the hectic process of capturing more metrics from page requests and analyzing server logs. There are plenty of third party services which maintain a database of blacklisted IPs. In our hunt for a suitable blacklisting service, we found that using a third party DNSBL/RBL service was not effective as these services blacklisted only email spambot servers and were not effective in preventing scraping bots. Less than 2% of scraping bots were detected for one of our customer’s when we did a trial run.

•    Throwing CAPTCHA – A very well know practice to stop bots is to throw CAPTCHA on pages with sensitive content. Although effective against bots, CAPTCHA is thrown to all clients requesting the web page irrespective of whether it is a human or a bot. This method often antagonizes users and hence reduces traffic to the website. Some more insights to the new NO CAPTCHA Re-CAPTCHA by Google can be found in our previous blog post.

•    Honey pot or Honey trap – Honey pots are a brilliant trap mechanism to capture new bots (scrapers who are not well versed with structure of every page) on the website. But, this approach poses a lesser known threat of reducing the page rank on search engines. Here’s why – Search engine bots visit these links and might get trapped accidentally. Even if exceptions to the page were made by disallowing a set of known user agents, the links to the traps might be indexed by a search engine bot. These links are interpreted as dead, irrelevant or fake links by search engines. With more such traps, the ranking of the website decreases considerably. Furthermore, filtering requests based on user agent can exploited as discussed above. In short, honey pots are risky business which must be handled very carefully.

To summarize, these prevention strategies listed are either weak or require constant monitoring and regular maintenance to keep them effective. In practice bots are far more challenging than they actually seem to be.

What to expect in 2015?

With increasing need for scraping, the number of scraping tools and expert scrapers are also increasing which simply means bots are going to be an increasing problem. In fact, the usage of headless browsers i.e, browser like bots which are used to scrape are increasing and scrapers are no longer relying on wget, curl and html parsers. Preventing malicious bots from stealing content without actually disturbing the genuine traffic from humans and search engine bots is just going get harder. By the end of the year, we could infer from our database that almost half of an average website’s traffic is caused by bots. And a whopping 30-40% is caused by malicious bots. We believe this is only going to increase if we do not step up to take action!

p.s. If you think you are facing similar problems, why not request for more information? Also, if you do not have the time or bandwidth for taking such actions, scraping prevention and stopping malicious bots is something we provide as a service. How about a free trial?

Source:http://www.shieldsquare.com/why-common-measures-taken-to-prevent-scraping-arent-effective/

How You Can Identify Buying Preferences of Customers Using Data Mining Techniques

The New Gold Rush: Exploring the Untapped ‘Data Mining’ Reserves of Top 3 Industries

In a bid to reach new moms bang on time, Target knows when you’ll get pregnant. Microsoft knows Return on Investment (ROI) of each of its employee. Pandora knows what’s your current music mood. Amazing, isn’t it?

Call it the stereotype of mathematician nerds or Holy Grail of predictive analysts of modern day, Data Mining is the new gold rush for many industries.

Today, companies are mining data to predict exact actions of their prospective customers. That means, when a huge chunk of customer data is seen through a series of sophisticated, formatted and collective data mining process, it can help create future-ready content of marketing and buying messages, diminishing scope of errors and maximizing customer loyalty.

Also a progressive team of coders and statisticians help push the envelope as far as the marketing and business tactics are concerned by collecting data and mining practices that are empowering.

Mentioned below is a detailed low-down of three such industries (real estate, retail and automobile) where LoginWorks Software has employed the most talented predictive analysts and comprehensive behavioral marketing platforms in the industry. Let’s take a look.

Real Estate Industry Looks Past the Spray-And-Pray Marketing Tactic By Mining User Data.

A supremely competitive market that is to an extent unstructured too, the real estate industry needs to reap the advantageous benefits of data mining. And, we at LoginWorks Softwares understand this extremely well!

Our robust team of knowledge-driven analysts make sure that we predict future trends, process the old data and rank the areas using actionable predictive analytics techniques. By applying a long-term strategy to analyze the trend and to get hold of the influential factors that are invested in buying a property, our data warehouses excels in using classical techniques, such as Neural Network, C&R Tree, linear regression, Multilayer Perception Model and SPSS in order to uncover the hidden knowledge.

By using Big Data as the bedrock of our Predictive Marketing Platform, we help you zero-in on the best possible property available for your interest. Data from more than a dozen of reliable national and international resources to give you the most accurate and up-to-the minute data. Right from extracting a refined database of one’s neighbourhood insights to classic knowledge discovery of meaningful l techniques, our statisticians have proven accuracy. We scientifically predict your data by:

•    Understanding powerful insights that lead to property-buying decisions.
•    Studying properties and ranking them city-wise, based on their predictability of getting sold in the future.
•    Measuring trends at micro level by making use of Home Price Index, Market Strength Indicator, Automated Valuation Model and Investment analytics.

Our marketing platform consists of the mentioned below automated features:

Data Mining Techniques for Customer Relationship Management and Customer Retention in Retail Industry

Data mining to a retailer is what mining gold to a goldsmith would be! Priceless, to say the least. To understand the dynamics and suggestive patterns of customer habits, a retailer is always scouting for information to up his sales and generate future leads from existing and prospective consumers. Hence, sourcing your birth date information from your social media profiles to zooming upon your customer’s buying behaviour in different seasons.

For a retailer, data mining helps the customer information to transform a point of sale into a detailed understanding of (1) Customer Identification; (2) Customer Attraction; (3) Customer Retention; and (4) Customer Development. A retailer can score potential benefits by calculating Return on Investment (ROI) of its customers by:

•    Gaining customer loyalty and long-term association
•    Saving up on huge spend on non-targeted advertising and marketing costs
•    Accessing customer information, which leads to directly targeting the profitable customers
•    Extending product life cycle
•    Uncovering predictable buying patterns that leads to a decrease in spoilage, distribution costs and holding costs

Our specialised marketing team targets customers for retention by applying myriad levels of data mining techniques, in both technological and statistical perspective. We primarily make use of ‘basket’ analysis technique that unearths links between two distinct products and ‘visual’ mining techniques that helps in discovering the power of instant visual association and buying.

Role of Data Mining in Retail Sector

Spinning the Magic Wheel of Data Mining Algorithms in Automobile Industry of Today

Often called as the ‘industries of industries’. the automobile industry of today is robustly engrossed in constructing new plants, and extracting more production levels from existing plants. Like food manufacturing and drug companies, today, automakers are in an urgent need to build sophisticated data extraction processes to keep themselves all equipped for exuberantly expensive and reputation-damaging incidents. If a data analytics by Teradata Corp, a data analytics company, is to be believed then the “auto industry spends $45 billion to $50 billion a year on recalls and warranty claim”. A number potentially damaging for the automobile industry at-large, we reckon!

Hence, it becomes all the more imperative for an automobile company of repute to make use of enhanced methodology of data mining algorithms.

Our analysts would help you to spot insightful patterns, trends, rules, and relationships from scores and scores of information, which is otherwise next to impossible for the human eye to trace or process. Our avant-garde technicians understand that an automative manufacturing industry does not interact on one-to-one basis with the end consumers on a direct basis, hence we step into the picture and use our fully-integrated data mining feature to help you with the:

•    Supply chain procedure (pre-sales and post-sales services, inventory, orders, production plan).
•    Full A-Zee marketing facts and figures(dealers, business centers, social media handling, direct marketing tactics, etc).
•    Manufacturing detailing (car configurations/packages/options codes and description).
•    Customers’ inclination information (websites web-activities).

Impact of Big Data Analytics of Direct Vehicle Pricing

Bottom line

To wrap it all up, it is imperative to understand that the customer data is just as crucial for an actionable insights as your regular listings data. Behavioural data and predictive analysis is where the real deal lies, because at the end of the day it is all about targeting the right audience with the right context!

Move forward in your industry by availing LOGNWORKS SOFTWARES’ comprehensive, integrated, strategic and sophisticated Data Mining Services.

Source: http://www.loginworks.com/blogs/web-scraping-blogs/can-identify-buying-preferences-customers-using-data-mining-techniques/

Living Your Dream Life When Others Are Scraping Their Windshields

One Internet marketer once remarked that he knew he was successful when he was awakened one early winter morning by the sound of his neighbors scraping the ice off of their windshields so that they could drive to work. As he burrowed deeper under his covers, he grinned to himself and realized that while he wasn't sipping cocktails aboard his own yacht yet, he had reached an enviable measure of success. If you're ready to begin living your dream life, then you're ready to become an Internet marketer.

What does living your dream life mean to you? Does it mean being able to be your own boss and not having to adhere to another's schedule? Does living your dream life mean taking vacations to exotic locations? The beauty of Internet marketing is that you can realize your goals and live the life you choose. You can do all the things you've dreamed of doing and go to the places you've dreamed of seeing. You answer to no one but yourself, although most Internet marketers learn that they still have a boss even after they quit their jobs. That new boss, actually bosses, are your customers and you'll have to do a great job in order to get them and keep them.

Most Internet marketers, the ones who truly have an entrepreneurial spirit, are naturals when it comes to pleasing customers. They want to earn their business, they care about their needs and their likes and dislikes and will go out on a limb to satisfy their customers. While customer service is severely lacking in many of today's businesses, without it, you'll be dead in the water before you even get started. If living your dream life is important to you, plan now to offer the kind of customer service that no one else can rival.

Imagine living your dream life for the rest of your life. Imagine being able to take your family to the kinds of places you've only seen in movies and read about in books. Imagine having money in the bank to tide you over when times are tough and having the peace of mind of knowing that your home is not at risk. You can have all of this and more if you are willing to work hard. The rewards for Internet marketers aren't instant, but they are sweet and they can be yours.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Living-Your-Dream-Life-When-Others-Are-Scraping-Their-Windshields&id=2983939

What is Blog Content Scraping?

Blog content scraping is an act usually performed with scripts that extract content from numerous sources and pulls it into one site. It is so easy now that anyone can install a WordPress site, put a free or commercial theme, and install a few plugins that will go and scrape content from selected blogs, so it can be published on their site.

Why are they Stealing my Content?

Some of our users have asked us why are they stealing my content? The simple answer is because you are AWESOME. The truth is that these content scrapers have ulterior motives. Below are just few reasons why someone would scrape your content:

•    Affiliate commission – There are some dirty affiliate marketers out there that just wants to exploit the system to make few extra bucks. They will use your content and other’s content to bring traffic to their site through search engine. These sites are usually targeted towards a specific niche, so they have related products that they are promoting.

•    Lead Generation – Often we see lawyers and realtors doing this. They want to seem like industry leaders in their small communities. They do not have the bandwidth to produce quality content, so they go out and scrape content from other sources. Sometimes, they are not even aware of this because they are paying some scumbag $30/month to add content and help them get better SEO. We have encountered quite a few of these in the past.

•    Advertising Revenue – Some folks just want to create a “hub” of knowledge. A one-stop-shop for users in a specific niche. If I had a penny for every time someone has done this with our content, then we would have a few hundred pennies. Often we notice that our site content is being scraped. The scraper always replies, I was doing this for the good of the community. Except the site is plastered with ads.

These are just a few reasons why someone would steal your content.

Source:http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/beginners-guide-to-preventing-blog-content-scraping-in-wordpress/

Choose the Best Data Mining Company With This Simple Rule

Data mining is the analysis part of the knowledge finding in databases. It involves finding patterns in large data sets including processes like artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics, and database systems. The main reason why companies do data mining is to transform a large set of data into understandable block of information that can be used for market knowledge. It allows companies to make informed business decisions.

Data mining was looked upon as a luxury until some time back, but businesses are waking up to the importance of the process by seeing the difference it makes. Most of the multinational corporations already have mining integrated as one of their core processes. Many companies don't make strategic decisions unless they have the complete data converted into useful information using mining techniques. However, it is not a cheap process and would require being put to good use in order to be able to justify its cost. This results in a demand of a data mining company that could fulfill the client's needs by being resourceful and economical at the same time.

Searching for the perfect data mining company for your business could become a lot easier if you follow one simple rule. The rule is to make sure you make enough strategic decisions that result in good profit or at least break even with a single session of mining the data, which allows you to justify the cost you put into the whole process. Then, choose the company that offers you the best quotation which allows you to maximize your profits and improve your business processes even more.

Most companies are not very stringent with their plans and pricing and would be happy to go that extra mile in order to help the client. That extra mile could include offering a discount on the whole process, or offering added services or extended time period in the same package and price as quoted. The way you negotiate with the company will decide the profit that you will make from the entire data mining process.

Data mining will not only improve your business decisions, it will improve your business processes as a whole. If used correctly, it will allow you to extract more out of the limited resources. It allows you to have comprehensive real time market knowledge that always keeps you ahead of your competitors. Therefore, putting in a few extra bucks to integrate it into your core business process is a really good idea. As mentioned earlier, if used correctly then it will not only justify its own cost but also increase profits manifold.

Choose the right company by integrating the whole process in your business and make the most of the market knowledge that is present on the internet. The power to make the best and the most informed decisions lies in your own hands, and data mining is one approach that will certainly get you a lot closer to your business goals.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Choose-the-Best-Data-Mining-Company-With-This-Simple-Rule&id=8784911

Usefulness of Web Scraping Services

For any business or organization, surveys and market research play important roles in the strategic decision-making process. Data extraction and web scraping techniques are important tools that find relevant data and information for your personal or business use. Many companies employ people to copy-paste data manually from the web pages. This process is very reliable but very costly as it results to time wastage and effort. This is so because the data collected is less compared to the resources spent and time taken to gather such data.

Nowadays, various data mining companies have developed effective web scraping techniques that can crawl over thousands of websites and their pages to harvest particular information. The information extracted is then stored into a CSV file, database, XML file, or any other source with the required format. After the data has been collected and stored, data mining process can be used to extract the hidden patterns and trends contained in the data. By understanding the correlations and patterns in the data; policies can be formulated and thereby aiding the decision-making process. The information can also be stored for future reference.

The following are some of the common examples of data extraction process:

• Scrap through a government portal in order to extract the names of the citizens who are reliable for a given survey.

• Scraping competitor websites for feature data and product pricing

• Using web scraping to download videos and images for stock photography site or for website design

Automated Data Collection

It is important to note that web scraping process allows a company to monitor the website data changes over a given time frame. It also collects the data on a routine basis regularly. Automated data collection techniques are quite important as they help companies to discover customer trends and market trends. By determining market trends, it is possible to understand the customer behavior and predict the likelihood of how the data will change.

The following are some of the examples of the automated data collection:

• Monitoring price information for the particular stocks on hourly basis

• Collecting mortgage rates from the various financial institutions on the daily basis

• Checking on weather reports on regular basis as required

By using web scraping services it is possible to extract any data that is related to your business. The data can then be downloaded into a spreadsheet or a database for it to be analyzed and compared. Storing the data in a database or in a required format makes it easier for interpretation and understanding of the correlations and for identification of the hidden patterns.

Through web scraping it is possible to get quicker and accurate results and thus saving many resources in terms of money and time. With data extraction services, it is possible to fetch information about pricing, mailing, database, profile data, and competitors data on a consistent basis. With the emergence of professional data mining companies outsourcing your services will greatly reduce your costs and at the same time you are assured of high quality services.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Usefulness-of-Web-Scraping-Services&id=7181014

Web Scraping Services, Data Recovery Software Adaptation Actions

Site scraping, also known as Web data mining, or Web harvesting, data mining software is a web site. Web scraping is closely related and similar web index, index Web content. Index of the pages is on most machines. The site scraping the difference between the focus on the translation of unstructured content network, usually rich text format, such as HTML, you should direct them to analyze data, and other spreadsheet or database. Network Piquing also makes web browsing more efficient and user productivity.

For example, the website, scraping compare prices on the Internet, automatic monitoring, and integrated changes in site identification and information. Agency enforcement actions and use of data scraping method to generate the benefits of file information relating to crime and criminal behavior.

Researchers have the interests of the pharmaceutical industry and network use scraping to collect information and statistical analysis of disease such as AIDS and influenza-like swine flu from the recent Influenza A (H1N1) epidemic. Run a program automatically when the data scraping is the only easy to collect data from another program.

Data scraping is a programmer product line generated by the system, it is no longer a useful way to date equipment. Generated data, and through the use of stripping data designed for use by the user. This clever, it is used to the software code can be used for public institutions.

A leading provider of Web scraping software's provides a wide range of user-based services company, can be cheap and easy way to extract and manage network data. Individuals can use to set up agents to seek regular information, then stores this information, and eventually released the information in several places. When the data system, individuals can change and reuse of these data and other applications, or simply use its intelligence.

All information is the host of safety and health classes and data warehousing, and by the user through the Internet Security Web console access. Some of the more software is called. Harvest is used to create a competitive intelligence and market information on the Web scrapers and network search. Script, network scraper can be stored in the form used will soon be ready.

Allow from all types of web pages, dynamic Ajax pages mark the safe area behind the complex unstructured HTML pages, and more data recovery software, to support adaptation actions. The software can also be exported in various formats, such as the data in Excel and other database programs. Web scraping software is used to collect too much information, no problem with a revolutionary device.

The program has the impact of many people or companies need to apply for comparable data from the Internet in different places, and useful information on the situation. A wide range of information, in a very short time detection method is relatively easy, very cost effective. The purpose of Web scraping software is used every day of commercial applications, and more data recovery software, to support adaptation actions.

The software can also be exported in various formats, such as the data in Excel and other database programs. Web scraping software is used to collect too much information, no problem with a revolutionary device. The pharmaceutical industry, meteorology, law enforcement agencies and government agencies.

Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/outsourcing-articles/web-scraping-services-data-recovery-software-adaptation-actions-5884907.html