Apify Blog: Web scraping and automation stories

Black Friday 2022: the final countdown for Czech e-commerce discount tricks

Is this year's Black Friday the last chance for e-commerce stores to artificially inflate their discounts? Hopefully, yes, thanks to new law based on EU directive.

13 min read Dec 5, 2022

Google Maps

It's not you, it's Google: how to overcome the Google Places API limit of 120 places

Natasha Lekh

Your extended go-to guide on how to use the Google Maps Scraper geolocation features to the fullest.

10 min read Dec 5, 2022

Web Scraping

How to build an e-commerce scraper

Percival Villalva

Extracting data from e-commerce websites is one of the most common use cases for web scraping. Luckily, most e-commerce stores follow similar design patterns, and once you understand them, it’s not that difficult to write a few lines of code to get the data you want.

13 min read Nov 29, 2022

Black Friday

Black Friday 2022 - naposledy bez pravidel, deklarované slevy jsou už poloviční

Jakub Balada

Za Hlídače shopů jsme se letos těšili nejen na Black Friday, ale zejména na platnost novely zákona o ochraně spotřebitele, která definuje jasná pravidla pro výpočet slev. Jak k tomu přistoupily?

11 min read Nov 27, 2022

Tutorial

How to scrape Instagram posts, comments, and photos

Jarda Hejlek

How to web scrape Instagram with our unofficial Instagram API to extract Instagram profile data, comments, hashtags, likes, locations, and photos.

6 min read Nov 24, 2022

Instagram

Case study: scraping Instagram to understand brand engagement

Mariachiara Faraon

How you can web scrape social media to understand the data behind likes and follows. Do followers always translate into revenue? If not, why not?

4 min read Nov 23, 2022

Google Maps

Scraping Paris bakeries using Google Maps API

Natasha Lekh

So you’ve extracted data from the website, now what? What about a little data visualization experiment, the one involving an early morning bicycle ride through Paris?

4 min read Nov 18, 2022

Tutorial

How to scrape the web with Playwright

Ondra Urban

Playwright is a rising star in the web scraping and automation world. Thought Puppeteer was powerful? Playwright will blow your mind.

5 min read Nov 16, 2022

Data Extraction

The top 5 instant data scrapers in 2023

Theo Vasilis

What is an instant data scraper? And how do you choose the best data scraping tool? We explain data scraping and give you the top 5 free instant data scrapers in 2023.

4 min read Nov 15, 2022

Web Scraping

Is web scraping legal?

Ondra Urban

Web scraping is legal if you scrape data publicly available on the internet. But you should avoid scraping personal data or intellectual property. We cover the confusion surrounding the legality of web scraping and give you tips for compliant and ethical scrapers.

17 min read Nov 15, 2022

AWS Lambda

Web scraping with AWS Lambda vs. Apify: what are the differences?

Theo Vasilis

In the tech world, can David compete with Goliath? Let’s find out how Apify fares as an AWS Lambda alternative for web scraping.

6 min read Nov 14, 2022

Legality

Developments in the hiQ v. LinkedIn case

Lucie Růžičková

What does the new judgment in the case of hiQ Labs, Inc. v LinkedIn Corp mean for web data extraction? We investigate the latest developments and explain the current legal status of web scraping ⚖️

3 min read Nov 11, 2022