As we live in an age overwhelmed with digital technology, all aspects of life intertwine with the internet and its powerful solutions. By making processes a lot more expressive and efficient through online communication, both casual conversations and business interactions have been transformed, to a point where life without the web seems inconceivable.

Alongside digital interactions, one of the biggest perks of technological advancements are the ability to store and exchange massive storage of information. The internet is swarmed with public information, which reflects the grandeur of human knowledge and achievement. However, we have reached a point where the sheer amount of available data has eclipsed human comprehension. Even with an intense fixation on very specific topics or niches, the volume of information exceeds the human ability to process and derive accurate decisions.

That being said, modern businesses still find ways to squeeze water from a stone and retrieve all relevant details from public data, which helps them make the right decisions and rise to the top. But how is it possible to utilize all the information, when even the most relevant sources of knowledge are so vast and ever-changing?

While traditional methods of data collection and analysis are way too slow and ineffective, modern companies and business-minded individuals use technology assistance to absorb and analyze the details with superhuman efficiency.

In this article, we will discuss the most effective methods of acquiring and analysing volatile data for market intelligence, all thanks to solutions in automated data collection. Here you can learn the key principles of algorithmic data aggregation, parsing, and information on key assistance tools like static residential proxies, which guard the automated processes from sudden interruptions. While most modern businesses utilize data collection to their advantage, the competitive nature of digital business encourages competitors to employ solutions that block automated data collection on their platforms. Keep reading to learn more about these obstacles, and how static residential proxies are used to eliminate them.

How Business Automate Data Collection

While it may seem counterintuitive to dedicate so much attention to collecting data that is publicly available, companies that pursue market intelligence with superior speed can make timely adjustments faster than anyone else. Through the utilization of automatable tools called web scrapers, businesses can collect, process, and analyze a continuous stream of incoming data in just a few seconds. But how does a web scraper work?

Varying in levels of applicability and complexity, a web scraper can be a simple script or a sophisticated software tool. Most enterprise data scrapers have a system of two layers – a web scraper and a parser.

The initial step, web scraping, involves a very simple procedure. Instead of accessing the page through a browser, data scraping bots send a connection request that retrieves the code of the same website. Then, once the information is stored on a device, a parser employs an algorithm that eliminates syntax elements and filters out the most relevant data points. If the process is successful, the downloaded HTML document is transformed into a readable data set, which can be observed manually, or analyzed by programming libraries for data manipulation, data visualization tools, and pattern prediction algorithms.

How popular is automated data collection

In attempts to gather market intelligence and boost e-commerce efforts, modern businesses have ramped up their use of data scraping solutions over the last 5 years:

  • 2020: 53% of businesses actively use automated data collection
  • 2021: The interest in efficient data processing grows, with 61% of companies utilizing web scraping solutions.
  • 2022: 68% of players across all industries automate data collection to gather market intelligence and other insights
  • 2023: Interest in data aggregation continues to grow with about 74% of companies utilizing technology solutions to gather information
  • 2024: The data suggests that about 80% of modern companies will use automated data collection as a key strategy for market research

As we can see, there is no doubt that data scraping is one of the best strategies to learn market trades, competitor pricing shifts, client opinions, and other key metrics that contribute to the growth of digitalized businesses. By ensuring a stable streamline of constantly updated information, companies can identify patterns in competitor behavior (or lack of it) and make seamless adjustments to emerge as the favorable option.

Automation restrictions: the main enemy of data scraping

Alongside valuable insights gathered from market intelligence, companies possess and generate a lot of public data that can be extracted and analyzed by competitors. Most companies, even though they are using automation themselves, impose restrictions that try to identify and block bot connections from other sources. One of the most common techniques is called rate limiting, which tracks IP addresses of incoming web traffic and restricts access to visitors that spam connection requests.

While this is also a good measure to prevent attempts to crash and overwhelm the site, often called DDoS attacks, it is a popular strategy to identify and block IP addresses associated with data scraping efforts. However, if these obstacles are effective, how do we still have so many businesses utilizing automated data collection?

Thankfully, none of these restrictions matters if a company is backed by a provider of static residential proxies. By routing the web connection through a remote intermediary server, they use the IP addresses of real internet users to mask the connection and access it from any location at will. Even if your main IP, which is supplied by the Internet Service Provider (ISP), gets blocked, or the site itself is not available in your region, pivoting connections to static residential proxies lets us change the Internet access point and apply new identities to data scraping connections.

Thanks to privatized sessions and access to a robust collection of residential IP addresses, businesses can run tens if not hundreds of data scraping bots and assign a different identity to each iteration. The best proxy providers ensure a fluent implementation of servers to data collection processes, even offering automated rotation offers at customized intervals to avoid recognition and blocks.

Summary

In order to advance the collection of market intelligence with automated solutions, businesses in 2024 use data scrapers to get the newest insights into competitor strategies. While establishing lasting connections can be tricky due to imposed limitations, static residential proxies provide a consistent selection of IP addresses to continue collection efforts with superior efficiency and without interruptions.