What Is Amazon Product Data Scraping?

At some point, to get an edge on your competitors, you must go beyond basic competitor analysis tactics like social media monitoring. You have to dig deeper into raw data to gain insight into your competitor’s moves and progress. But, how do you gain access to this data? Introducing Amazon product data scraping. 

Amazon product data scraping is the process of automatically extracting a specific set of information from Amazon’s website. Picture a digital detective or bot that goes undercover on your behalf, visits Amazon product pages and gets you crucial competitor data including:

• Product names and images 
• Product prices 
• Product descriptions 
• Customer reviews and ratings
• Related products and recommendations 
• Q&A and customer interactions 

With this data in hand, your competitors have little to no chance of beating you. But, don’t you have to be tech savvy to deploy your digital detective? No! With the help of this How to Scrape Amazon – Full Guide, you can do just that. 

Not so fast, though! Before you get down to scraping Amazon product data, let’s explore how you can make the most out of the process. You’ll also learn how to bypass Amazon’s anti-scraping measures.

Making the Most Out of Amazon Product Data Scraping

As you go about scrapping Amazon product data, you’ll come across different tactics with various steps to follow. However, this should not be a worry. Basically, there are two types of pages you can source data from: Amazon search results pages or individual product pages. 

Of the two page types, you are better off scraping Amazon’s search results pages. Opt for scrapping specific product pages whenever you are working with a small number of product pages. Why?

The scrapping process involves you sending requests for the specific data set you desire, with the help of an automated bot or scraper. And doing so comes with legal and ethical risks and consequences. 

So, sending out multiple requests at the same time especially when you are after a large data set might land you into legal trouble or possibly lead to your account’s closure. However, there is a solution to this and you can learn about that at the end of this blog post.

With that in mind, let’s now explore the step-by-step process to make the most out of your Amazon product data scraping mission:

1. Determine the product data you need

Just like any other mission, you need to know your objectives and what data would help fulfill the objective. For example, if you are in the tech product industry, specifically dealing in home appliances, you should set your mind upon the specific product details you need.

With your mind set upon a specific list of products, proceed to get a list of the products’ URLs or ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers). Collect the ASINs or URLs based on your business or research goals. The ASINs are alphanumeric codes that uniquely identify each product on Amazon. You can find them in the product URLs or directly on the product pages. 

Learn from this Amazon affiliate link breakdown:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/161566200?tag=yourdomain0d

https:// – Protocol 

www.amazon.com: Domain

dp: Detail product 

161566200: ASIN number/product ID 

?tag=yourdomain0d: Store tracking ID

2. Select a convenient tool for the task 

After putting together a list of product URLs or ASINs, proceed to selecting a scraping tool or even going with the manual method. There are different tools out there like BeautifulSoup, each with their cons and pros. 

These tools simulate web browsers and visit Amazon product pages to extract information. From the guide, you can learn about various scraping tools and techniques. 

3. Store the scraped Amazon product data safely

You can store the scraped data in different structured formats such as JSON, CSV, or tables. Let the rows outline each product and the columns detail the relevant product attributes such as name, rating, and price. However, ensure the data is stored securely using techniques like encryption or data masking. Moreover, backup the data too. 

4. Clean and structure the collected data 

Go through the data and remove irrelevant information, empty values, and duplicates. Handle missing data by replacing it with placeholders for easy tracking. Then, group data by purpose or category or add metadata like timestamps and source for tracking. Remember, your goal is to ensure consistent formatting and have data you can analyze efficiently. 

5. Analyze and monitor the data

Finally, based on the goal you had in mind, analyze and monitor the data. For example, you can undertake the following analyses to derive valuable insights:

• Competitor analysis: You can compare product attributes across competitors to identify gaps and opportunities. 
• SEO optimization: Use the product description data for SEO keyword analysis to determine why your competitors rank for particular keywords. 
• Market research: Track trends like emerging niches and seasonal demands to understand customer preferences. 
• Customer profiling: Analyze the customer reviews to extract insights about customer behavior and come up with tailored market efforts for the customers.

Even though Amazon product data scraping presents you with all these benefits, realize that it can be challenging too due to Amazon’s anti-scraping measures. However, there are legal and ethical ways of bypassing these obstacles. Let’s dive in!

How to Bypass Amazon’s Anti-Scraping Measures 

1. Use real user agents

In the case of website scraping, a user agent refers to the information your web browser conveys to Amazon’s servers. The server uses the information to determine the browser name, version, operating system, and more. So, you ought to use a tool that creates legitimate user agents, mimicking human behavior to avoid detection. 

2. Keep off bulk-scraping 

Bulk-scraping can overload servers, slowing down response for other users. Doing so might raise an alarm on Amazon’s side, prompting them to check on the source of the requests, probably sending you a warning or slapping you with legal charges. 

3. Implement anti-bot measures 

Since Amazon uses techniques such as the CAPTCHA system to limit automated activities, it is crucial for you to go for a web scraper capable of emulating human behavior. 

4. Use dynamic IP addresses or proxies 

Many requests from the same IP address can lead to Amazon easily identifying what you are doing and blacklisting the IP. So, get a proxy or set up a dynamic IP generation system when sending requests. Moreover, you should have delay periods between requests to ensure you are within Amazon’s request rate limits. 

Conclusion

Yes, data is king. However, getting the most valuable data requires effort, especially in the e-Commerce space. Getting the data from established platforms like Amazon is not straightforward and has its own challenges. That is why we opt for website data scraping. In this article, you have learned about Amazon product data scraping and how to sail rather smoothly through the process. Now, go and scrape the data you desire efficiently!