What’s the Difference: Web Scraping Vs Data Mining?

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Although these words do share many similarities, they are distinctly different. Today, we’re going to describe each term and break down the differences between them.

The distinction between web scraping and crawling is hard to define for many people. That’s why we wanted to write an article about it. We hope this article will remove the confusion of people who are seeking information regarding this topic.

Data Mining

Data mining is a method in which patterns are discovered in datasets involving various machine learning technologies. The data is collected in various formats in this method, and used for different purposes. It aims at extracting knowledge from desired websites and turning it into comprehensible frameworks for further use. There are various aspects to this methodology, such as pre-processing, consideration of inference, consideration of complexity, metrics of interest, and data management.

In short, we can say that “Data Mining is the process of advance analysis of extensive data sets.”

Web Scraping

Web scraping is the method where data is collected from desired web pages and is also known as data collection and data extraction. Scraping tools and applications, with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, access the World Wide Web, gather valuable data, and extract it according to your needs. The information is stored in a central database or is downloaded for further use on your hard drive.

In short, we can define web scraping “Web scraping refers to the extraction of data from any website.”

How these methods are used and used in daily life is one of the main differences between data mining and web scraping. For example, data mining is used to see how different websites relate to each other. Uber and Careem use the technology of machine learning to calculate ETAs for their rides and to generate accurate results.

Web scraping is used for a number of reasons, including financial and academic studies. These strategies may be used by a corporation or organization to gather data about its competitors and improve its sales. Also, they play a critical role in creating leads online and attracting a large number of customers.

Foundation of Techniques

Web scraping and data mining both draw from the same base, but these methodologies are implemented in various walks of life. For example, data mining is used to extract and transform information from existing websites into a readable and scalable format.

However, web scraping is used to collect web content and data from PDF files, HTML documents, and interactive pages. These methodologies can be used to market, advertise, and promote our brands, and social media is the best place to advertise your products and services. In just a matter of minutes, we can generate up to 15,000 leads.

Difference Between Web Scraping and Data Mining

The difference between those two words should be pretty clear at this point. But let’s put it in more clear terms.

Web scraping refers to the method of collecting and structuring the data from web sources in a more convenient format. It involves no processing or review of the data.

Data mining refers to the method of analyzing large data sets to reveal useful information and patterns. It does not require data processing or extraction.

Data mining is not about extracting data. Web scraping may be used to build the datasets that are to be used in data mining.

Conclusion

Most possibly, the confusion between these terms stems from the similarities between data mining and data extraction (which has more web scraping similarities).

If you want to learn more about our scraping services, check out our web scraping page.

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