What is Web Scraping?
The automated extraction of data from websites, typically at scale.
Web scraping is the practice of using automated tools to extract data from websites. It ranges from legitimate activities (search engine indexing, price comparison services) to unauthorized data collection (content theft, competitive intelligence scraping, AI training data harvesting).
Scraping tools vary in sophistication. Simple scrapers make HTTP requests and parse HTML (Beautiful Soup, Scrapy). Browser-based scrapers control real browsers to handle JavaScript-rendered content (Puppeteer, Playwright, Selenium). AI-powered scrapers use computer vision and NLP to understand page structure (Diffbot).
The legality of web scraping exists in a gray area that depends on jurisdiction, terms of service, data type, and usage. The rise of AI training has intensified the scraping debate, as AI companies argue for broad data access while content creators seek to protect their work.
How Switch Helps
Switch detects scraping activity across the sophistication spectrum — from simple HTTP scrapers to browser-based automation — and provides journey workflows to block, challenge, or rate-limit scrapers.
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Diffbot
Diffbot
Diffbot's AI-powered web scraping and knowledge graph crawler.
Puppeteer
Google's headless Chrome automation library commonly used for scraping.
Playwright
Microsoft
Microsoft's browser automation framework for testing and scraping.
Selenium
SeleniumHQ
The original browser automation framework used for testing and scraping.