E-commerce price tracking, real estate market analysis, or social media trends... Web scraping is a goldmine for businesses. However, staying within "legal" boundaries while mining this data is crucial for the sustainability of your project.

Does Public Data Belong to "Everyone"?

The general rule is: Scraping public data is generally legal. However, how you use this data and the load you put on the site while scraping it changes the situation.

Important Rule: If a site requires a username and password (login) to access, scraping that data without permission can cause trouble. However, data that does not require login, such as Google search results, is in a safer zone.

3 Golden Rules for Ethical Scraping

  • Respect the Robots.txt File: Every site has rules for bots at the sitename.com/robots.txt address. If the site owner has stated "Disallow", you should not scrape that page.
  • Do Not Exhaust the Server (Rate Limiting): Slowing down the site by sending 100 requests per second (a DDoS-like effect) can constitute a crime. We always add "sleep" intervals between the requests of our bots.
  • Avoid Personal Data (GDPR & CCPA): Collecting and processing the personal data of EU citizens or users, such as names, phone numbers, and e-mails without permission, is a violation of data protection laws. Target only "anonymous" data like products, prices, and stock.

The CodeAutomics Approach

In the bots we develop, we provide continuous data flow by using "User-Agent" rotation and IP proxy pools, while trying to ensure maximum compliance with the target site's Terms of Service (ToS).

You can contact us to track your competitors through legal and ethical methods.