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Web scraping can let you extract structured data from eBay without using the official eBay API. Scrape and download product descriptions, prices, images, locations, merchant profiles, and product availability. Read on to find out why and how you should scrape eBay.
- Is there value in eBay data?
- Using an eBay scraper vs. eBay API
- How web scraping data is used
- Is it legal to scrape eBay?
- What structured scraped eBay data looks like
- Step-by-step guide to scraping eBay listings
- Other e-commerce web scrapers
Scraping eBay data
eBay is one of the oldest internet e-commerce sites. Launched in 1995, it now connects over 154 million buyers with 19 million sellers all over the world. That led to $19.5 billion in gross merchandise volume in the third quarter of 2021. And $12.5 billion of that was bought on mobile devices, so smart old eBay isn't being left behind in the shift to mobile.
Those numbers translate into a lot of data, including product descriptions, prices, images, locations, merchant profiles, product availability, and brand presence. If your business uses eBay, accessing that data could give you insights on eBay trending items and product research, help you find best-selling products, learn about your competitors, precisely adjust your prices in real-time to compete, and find opportunities that no amount of manual intelligence gathering can compete with.
But how can you get that data in a format you can easily use? Read on to find out why web scraping is the modern, efficient way to directly pull data from any website, even eBay.
Using an eBay scraper vs. the eBay API
What about using an API to get data from eBay?
If you aren't sure of the meaning of the term API, or application programming interface, first head over to what is an API?
Basically, the ideal API should let you interact with a website as if you were accessing it just like a regular user, but with all the advantages that come with computers interacting directly with each other, such as speed, accuracy, repeatability, and scalability.
eBay APIs can get you some of the information locked in eBay listings, but there is an approval process and there are call limits. If you're not in a hurry and just want to do a little casual scraping, or don't have very demanding use cases, you should be fine with the official eBay APIs.
Web scraping effectively creates an unofficial eBay API to let you extract eBay data at scale whenever you need it. If you haven't come across web scraping before, you should check out our easy-to-understand Beginner's Guide To Web Scraping. It explains everything you need to know about how it works and the advantages and disadvantages of web scraping. If you still have questions, take a look at the pros and cons of web scraping. We also have a quick guide for if you're puzzled by the difference between web scraping and web crawling.
Using web scraping to extract data from eBay means that you have all the advantages of an API, but you also have the flexibility and scalability provided by web scraping.
How web scraping data is used
Web scraping is increasingly being used in the e-commerce and retail industry to monitor prices across multiple websites in real time, track competitors, run price comparisons, and carry out extensive market research.
Is it legal to scrape eBay?
Yes, scraping is legal. You do have to understand the boundaries, but we've got you covered with a detailed assessment of the legality of web scraping: Is web scraping legal?
What structured scraped eBay data looks like
You can download the same dataset in CSV, Excel, and XML formats.
We used that data to explore the number of drones sold according to brand. DJI comes out way on top, but some of the others, such as Ultimaxx and Potensic, are so close that it would be surprising if there weren't ways for a reseller or dropshipper to nudge buyers one way or the other.
Breaking the numbers down by location, this kind of insight could be useful not only for marketers and brands, but also for town planners, airport officials, and of course businesses looking for underexplored opportunities.
Getting this dataset and creating those charts took minutes. Once extracted, the data can be used and reused as needed, and it can be extracted repeatedly - on-demand and at scale.
How to scrape eBay data
So let's get to the business of extracting data from eBay with eBay Scraper.
Step 1. Find eBay Scraper on Apify Store
Go to the eBay scraper's page, and click the Try for free button. You will be redirected to Apify Console, which is your workspace to run tasks for your scrapers. If you already have an Apify account and are logged in, go to Step 3.
If you are not signed in, you’ll find yourself on the sign-up page (if you are already signed in, skip to Step 3). Sign up using your email account, Google, or GitHub. You will be redirected to the scraper’s page on your Apify Console.
Step 2. Choose items or categories you want to scrape on the eBay website
Click the Start your free trial button to start using the actor. You don't need a credit card and the free plan gives you $5 in platform credits every month.
Now you can fill in the input fields. Let's use our drone example and scrape some eBay drone data. First, you need to tell the scraper what you want to scrape. So you need a start URL.
For this tutorial, we don't want to scrape an entire category. That could take a long time. So let's go to ebay.com and look through the categories until we get to the "camera drones" category. Click on the category and you'll be directed to a page. On that page, you should see the DJI brand sub-category. Let's narrow it down even further and get data about the DJI Mini 2. So click on DJI Mini 2. That's about the right amount of data for this tutorial.
The URL of the page is the category you want and you can use it as your start URL. For the DJI Mini 2, the URL is https://www.ebay.com/b/DJI-Mini-2/179697/bn_7117623239
Step 3. Copy and paste the eBay URLs
So just copy that URL from your browser and head back to Apify Console.
Step 3. Start the eBay Scraper
Now just click the green Start button at the bottom of the page. eBay Scraper will start running. This means that it's successfully scraping eBay. You'll see detailed output telling you how it's progressing.
This could take about 10 minutes, but, hey, even scraping a small part of eBay is a lot of data! Get a cup of coffee while the bot does the work ☕🦾
Step 4. Collect your eBay data
Click the Save&Start button to start running your eBay scraper. As the eBay data extraction tool is running, you’ll start seeing the output as the data starts coming in. Let's wait a few seconds until the status changes to Succeeded 🏁.
Step 5. Preview and export your e-commerce data
And the last step is to access the data you've scraped. Just click on the Storage tab -> Export button. That will give you access to all your data in multiple structured formats. You can preview, filter, and download the data in JSON, CSV, XML, and more.
Other e-commerce web scrapers
Scraping eBay is just one way that e-commerce retailers, dropshippers, and brands can boost their businesses. Web scraping can turn any website into an API. Check out the e-commerce section of Apify Store for hundreds of web scrapers dedicated to extracting data from product listings.
Here's a quick list of some of our most popular e-commerce scrapers. You might also like to check out top 5 web scraping tools to help you gather retail analytics.
Need to do product mapping for eBay and another online store?
Try our newest AI Product Matcher, an advanced AI model for e-commerce designed to compare two items from different online stores and determine whether they are identical. Fueled by the product data scraped from the web stores daily, this tool scan for matches practically in real-time, enabling you to stay updated with the latest information about products.
Use it to monitor exact product matches across the industry, get realistic estimates for upcoming promotional campaigns, monitor changes in your competitors’ offerings, and complement or even replace the time-consuming process of manual mapping.
More e-commerce scraping: scrape reviews
