Web scraping is an automated method of collecting data from websites and storing it in a structured format. We explain popular tools for getting that data and what you can do with it.

What to know about web scraping. Web scraping is usually an automated process, but it doesn't have to be; data can be scraped from websites manually, by humans, though that's slow and inefficient.

Although automated web scraping by search engines has been accepted by website owners for decades, the economic shift being brought about by AI has triggered a rethink.