Harvesting client and buyer reviews
26 February 2023
Gathering various star rankings, buyer reviews, as well as posts on social media platforms that cover client opinions and experiences is of great importance for teams. That is how they can analyze their own efficiency and the performance of their rivals to improve their work and keep the pace. Many users approach Astro to buy residential IP addresses or start a proxy free trial for this very purpose. In this overview, we will describe several technical ways to do so.
Datasets to grab
Indeed, reviews and feedback left by clients greatly contribute to clarifying audience sentiments. These activities may rely on such datasets as:
- Star rankings;
- Reviews left via platforms with market listings and ratings;
- Reviews left via popular search engines, e.g. Google;
- Posts published on social media platforms, including mentioning, reactions, tagging, etc.;
- Forum threads.
Ways to gather clients’ reviews if you know how to code
Our experience with buying residential IPs and proxy free trial periods says the following techniques are both promising and potent:
1. To begin with, Beautiful Soup
When it comes to harvesting reviews via Beautiful Soup, it can be performed by making use of a server to get the target page’s content. Then these deliverables are subject to sifting through the HTML for the purpose of identifying each h3 tag. After that, the tags’ text must be copied to create the sought-after code-based result.
2. Java scraping
In case you intend to apply Java for harvesting purposes, you are supposed to access the page’s Developer Console. This is your road to reach the HTML part. Once you are there, scrape the relevant info and parse the code. Finally, export the items of interest into a CSV file by means of XPath.
3. PHP option
PHP is also helpful in scraping and analyzing the code of a site. This task can be resolved by applying the ‘parsecode’, and ‘echo’ options. That’s how you smash the way to the code and end up in the position to remove irrelevant text. Finally, one can resort to the ‘$GLOBALS’ or ‘global variable’ options. This is how one covers info of interest contained in <p> tags by isolating and pulling it out.
No-code options
There exist shortcuts for those willing to apply ready-to-use programs for data harvesting and dedicated scrapers. On the one hand, using them does not enable you to capitalize on a custom-tailored web scraper built specifically for your purposes and scenarios. On the other hand, with them, you avoid coding and other efforts mandating tech-savvy staff.
What we mean here are totally automated tools capable of grabbing review data. They offer convenient capabilities, including instantly available target page crawlers and scrapers, focused on ever-changing target page architectures. Below, some perfect examples are named.
- Scraper for Amazon;
- Scraper for Aliexpress;
- Scraper for Ebay.
All these no-code options make it possible for end-users to automatically harvest and parse reviews, star rankings, STRs, and other indices of social sentiment and proof.
Wrapping up: where to buy the best proxies after a free trial
Whatever your particular choice is, do not forget to mask your real address and location properly, especially when you apply in-house built scrapers. While being a thoroughly legal and legit practice (as long as personally identifiable data is not involved), data harvesting efforts do raise suspicion. Therefore, visit Astro to buy residential IP addresses with rotation. This will protect your privacy and conceal your scraping activities. Proxy free trial is always available for new users.
