Thanks to the immense achievements of digital innovation, information technologies have reshaped the infrastructure of business operations. The biggest contributor to the growth of modern companies is unlimited access to vast amounts of applicable information. Just a few decades ago, gathering and analyzing business-related data required a lot more time, while yielding very limited results. Parties with the largest initial capital and resources could hold the industry in a chokehold, mainly due to the high costs of advertisement and extremely inefficient methods of data collection.
Nowadays, the internet has brought groundbreaking changes to the business world by levelling out the playing field. While wealthy companies still have the upper hand, the unlimited access to public information and unrestricted ability to reach partners, other companies, and even customers all over the world are the key factors that turn the skilful execution of tasks into the main driver of success.
With more ways to succeed and outperform other players in a competitive business environment, progress is booming. However, finding ways to outperform technically proficient companies is easier said than done, and triumph is earned by those who are best at resolving the newfound challenges of the new age.
One of them is very ironic – instead of the scarcity of information, businesses are overwhelmed with public data. Such knowledge helps companies discover new opportunities and make adjustments in real time. Big data requires technology assistance for effective collection, processing, and analysis. This article covers solutions to working with overwhelming public data on the internet, and what needs to be done to extract insights for smart business decisions. Here you will learn about the best information-processing tools and online anonymity solutions, like unlimited residential proxies, which make efficient data collection possible.
How to Collect Data Online
Information extraction through manual labor is no longer efficient, as the vast volumes of big data exceed human capabilities. Even for cases where key information sources do not have much knowledge for insights, algorithmic automation of aggregation and analysis is just too good to miss out on.
Efficient data collection is the main skill companies need to work on to dominate big data initiatives. Companies can collect information from social media platforms, and IoT appliances, manage internal data, and most importantly – automate data aggregation from competitor websites. With the help of algorithmic automation, processes have a well-rounded system of pre-determined steps, executed and inhuman speeds.
One of the best tools for web data collection is a data scraper. It is one of the most widely used tools for navigating retailer websites, social platforms, and key pages swarming with useful data. Without automation, manual data extractions are too slow, to the point where websites, especially the most popular e-commerce platforms, make real-time updates a lot faster.
Based on the user’s configuration, web scrapers send many connection requests to the targeted site, its homepage and relevant subpages. These web harvesting tools extract web resources, eliminate markups, and filter the data before pushing it onto a data set. Adding unlimited residential proxies into the mix is essential for collecting data in real-time, making sure that the connection does not get blocked.
Analyzing Big Data
After acquiring large collections of constantly renewed data, information analysis also depends on filtering algorithms, continuous updates, and tools for visual representation and pattern recognition. What makes big data overwhelming for manual inspections, it greatly enhances the accuracy of insights and possible predictions through the powerful encompassment of all registered metrics.
With the application of powerful analytics tools, companies can build big data sets that cover all relevant information on the respective market, or single out its main competitors.
For example, let’s focus on the analysis of one of the most valuable data metrics for retailers – price intelligence. Through swift extractions and efficient analysis, businesses can identify changes in sensitive competitor pricing and make strategic decisions to adjust their pricing with undercuts and limited discounts, overtaking other parties and emerging as the best available option.
Navigating Geolocation Limits
One of the biggest strengths of e-commerce is the ability to profile potential clients and reach out to internet users who could be interested in your product or service. However, the scope of data-related business tasks does not exceed the restrictions imposed by a provided IP address.
Businesses that want to access data from remote regions will only see the information that is relevant to the location within the supplied network identity. Geolocation restrictions prevent companies from seeing how the internet is perceived by potential clients in other regions, and in some cases, the sites themselves block traffic from other countries.
However, with the help of unlimited residential proxies, companies can use different web access points at will while using the IP addresses of legitimate homeowners. Even for the most remote corners of the world, getting a unique identity is not a problem, as the best proxy suppliers have unlimited residential proxies all over the world. Here is the amount of available locations among the top 5 industry providers:
- Smartproxy: 195+ locations
- Brightdata: 195 locations
- Oxylabs: 100+ countries
- Webshare: 50+ locations
- NetNut: 50+ countries
The freedom of connections with unlimited residential proxies helps companies target remote competitors, different iterations of local social media sites, region-based search engine results pages (SERP), and many other targets. By eliminating geolocation restrictions, businesses get unlimited access to the web and all the big data needed to maintain a competitive advantage.
Summary
Despite the modern challenges presented by big data, tech-savvy companies embrace the power of data collection and squeeze out all the benefits from algorithmic automation. Paired with powerful web privacy solutions, businesses can get all desired information and ignore any obstacles in real-time data collection.