Perhaps the biggest challenges that website owners face, in addition to attracting visitors, is coming up with original content to publish on their websites.
Search engines are ravenously hungry creatures. They are constantly scraping the web, seeking content that they can add to the index, and if your site publishes good quality original content, the chances are very likely that you will receive higher ranking on the SERPs.
The process may not be as simple as it sounds, as there are perhaps millions of competitors in the same area, who may be competing for ranking on the same keyword(s).
Because of the challenges that are faced, with the very time-consuming and labor intensive tasks of continually creating and publishing original content, website owners may often seek shortcuts or use methods and applications that are frowned on by the search engines.
In order to remain competitive, another of the tasks, with which website owners are faced, is with keeping an eye on the competition. You need to know what the competition is up to, and you need to be able to react to, or else you can easily get left behind. One of the ways that you can do this is by developing applications that focus on data scraping. Obtaining the data may be harmless, but how it is used is where the questions often arise.
While the practice may appear to fairly innocuous and can be useful, there are several instances where it may be questioned.
There is now rapidly expanding industry for data mining. Reports are that we now create more data every day than we did in the over the last two decades, and the market for data mining continues to expand exponentially. Marketers are constantly scraping the web to build profiles of consumers, and we may be making easier for them, by leaving trails that they can easily follow.
It may be it bit disconcerting to know that every website that you ever visit is actually logged, and the data can be used to build a profile of your habits. Many uses may find it intrusive, to find that information that should be considered as private, is now available for public consumption.
Scraping can involve not only personal data, but also your buying behaviour as well as customary habits or hobbies. All of your online activities can be tracked, and although it may be stated as otherwise, there are ways that your data can be shared by other third parties, with contravening any laws
It is easy to collect detailed information, such as cell-phone numbers, email addresses and even your posts on the social networks, can easily be tracked and analysed.
There is considerable debate as to the ownership of data that is posted on the social networks. To whom does it really belong, and who should be allowed access to it?
It is also not surprising that media outlets are using data scraping methods by employing what are called listening devices to monitor what is being said on the social networks in real time. It is one of the ways that they can observe what is being said about specific organisations, products or people.
The debate is sure to continue, but there is no doubt that it can be useful.
Source: http://www.twm.co.nz/is-data-scraping-unethical/
Note:
Search engines are ravenously hungry creatures. They are constantly scraping the web, seeking content that they can add to the index, and if your site publishes good quality original content, the chances are very likely that you will receive higher ranking on the SERPs.
The process may not be as simple as it sounds, as there are perhaps millions of competitors in the same area, who may be competing for ranking on the same keyword(s).
Because of the challenges that are faced, with the very time-consuming and labor intensive tasks of continually creating and publishing original content, website owners may often seek shortcuts or use methods and applications that are frowned on by the search engines.
In order to remain competitive, another of the tasks, with which website owners are faced, is with keeping an eye on the competition. You need to know what the competition is up to, and you need to be able to react to, or else you can easily get left behind. One of the ways that you can do this is by developing applications that focus on data scraping. Obtaining the data may be harmless, but how it is used is where the questions often arise.
While the practice may appear to fairly innocuous and can be useful, there are several instances where it may be questioned.
There is now rapidly expanding industry for data mining. Reports are that we now create more data every day than we did in the over the last two decades, and the market for data mining continues to expand exponentially. Marketers are constantly scraping the web to build profiles of consumers, and we may be making easier for them, by leaving trails that they can easily follow.
It may be it bit disconcerting to know that every website that you ever visit is actually logged, and the data can be used to build a profile of your habits. Many uses may find it intrusive, to find that information that should be considered as private, is now available for public consumption.
Scraping can involve not only personal data, but also your buying behaviour as well as customary habits or hobbies. All of your online activities can be tracked, and although it may be stated as otherwise, there are ways that your data can be shared by other third parties, with contravening any laws
It is easy to collect detailed information, such as cell-phone numbers, email addresses and even your posts on the social networks, can easily be tracked and analysed.
There is considerable debate as to the ownership of data that is posted on the social networks. To whom does it really belong, and who should be allowed access to it?
It is also not surprising that media outlets are using data scraping methods by employing what are called listening devices to monitor what is being said on the social networks in real time. It is one of the ways that they can observe what is being said about specific organisations, products or people.
The debate is sure to continue, but there is no doubt that it can be useful.
Source: http://www.twm.co.nz/is-data-scraping-unethical/
Note:
Rose Marley is experienced web scraping consultant and writes
articles on data
scraping services, web data scraping, web scraper, data
scraping services, website scraping, eBay product scraping, Forms Data Entry
etc.
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