Over the last few weeks, my research has led me to web scraping tools.
I prefer web scrapers that rely on low-code, no-code, or Chrome Extensions. I’m not interested in learning beyond Python’s rudiments.
What I noticed is web scraping tools and the people behind them like to download hordes of data. This creates a new, bigger problem - dirty data.
Dirty data requires extensive data scrubbing. Scrubbing can outweigh the benefits of scraping.
Save time acquiring data; lose more time cleaning and sorting it.
I prefer clean, organized, uniform data in all that I do.
These two points led me to scraping tools that privilege selection and control over masses of unorganized data.
A slower scrape that affords me control of the extraction and ensuring data organization. Minimizes cleaning and organizing.
Two Chrome Extensions I’ve found useful for this approach: