Everything You Need To Know About Web Scraping Trend Data

Online trends can come and go in just a few days. Companies that take advantage of these trends can get massive boosts to their brands. Whether by taking advantage of search trends or jumping on social media trends, a good marketing team can use trend data to dramatically increase their brand’s advertising success.‌

How? With web scraping. Keep reading to learn how to take advantage of web scraping trend data for marketing and why it’s so valuable.

Why Bother Web Scraping Trend Data?

Before you go any further, it’s invaluable to understand why web scraping trend data is helpful. Trends are an insight into what people care about right now, not what people cared about last month or last year. Tracking trends helps you stay on top of the topics that actually interest people.‌

Search trends let you know what people are trying to learn. When you track search trends, you can discover the topics people want to learn more about and produce content that answers their questions.‌

Meanwhile, social media trends tell you what people are talking about. This gives you a way to enter the conversation, whether by writing content, sharing relevant info on social media, or producing ads that match the zeitgeist in real-time.

The Benefits of Understanding Real Time Trends for Marketing

This real time factor is invaluable in marketing. Digital marketing has become one of the most valuable tools in the modern advertising world. A digital campaign can be adjusted on the fly to talk about relevant topics. Understanding real time trends can give your marketing an edge.

Imagine that you’re running a marketing department for a shoe company. One day, a new song mentions sneakers in the lyrics and becomes extremely popular overnight. People are talking about it, searching the lyrics, and sneakers are suddenly popular.‌

You could learn about this trend through news articles a few days after it explodes and incorporate it into your digital marketing right away. However, everyone else in the shoe industry did the same thing, so you look like you’re just hopping on the bandwagon.‌

On the other hand, you could learn about the trend in real time. You’ll spot the trend as it explodes and get out your first few digital ads that reference it within hours of it becoming a big deal. You’ll get the lion’s share of the clicks since no one else is doing what you’re doing just yet. You’re benefiting from being the first mover.‌

Why Web Scraping Trends Is the Best Solution

It’s clear that understanding how real time trends are evolving can make a big difference to your marketing efforts. But how should you gather that information? The answer is simple: through a trend scraper.‌

Web scrapers can target sites that collect search trends and social media sites to gather real-time information about trending tags and searches. A solid trend scraping program can give you information about when certain kinds of tags and inquiries are more common and when tags related to your business are getting traction. More importantly, a scraping program can monitor these sites for you automatically.‌

That can save you a lot of time and effort in the long run. You can trust your scraper to handle the bulk of the research and get notifications when relevant trends begin. As a result, you can be one of the first to react to the trend, putting you at the forefront and winning more attention for your brand.‌

How to Build a Trend Scraper

The next question is how to develop a trend scraper that does what you need it to do. Luckily, the process is simpler than you’d think. Here are the steps you can take to build a web scraping program to collect the trends you care about.‌

1. Choose a programming language

You can write web scraping programs in many languages, but some are better than others. The language you choose should ideally be lightweight and designed to work well online. If it’s free and has solid library support, even better.‌

These requirements are why Python and node.js are some of the best options out there. You can also use languages like C++, Java, and even R, if those are the languages with which you’re most familiar.‌

2. Identify the data you want to collect

Next, you should decide exactly what trends you want to collect and where. Identify the sites you care about and the keywords that matter to you. Your program will look different if it’s scraping social media sites or scraping trend monitoring sites. You should also examine the sites you’re targeting to understand how they store the data and where.‌

3. Write a program that targets your preferred data

A great way to design your program is to scrape the top 100 trends from your targeted sites every hour, then search the next 1000 for keywords and scrape those, too. This can give you a clear overview of how the trends change over time while monitoring upcoming trends that might be relevant to you.‌

4. Implement good proxies

The last step for any good web scraping program is to implement high-quality proxies. A proxy acts as a shield for your IP address.‌

Some social media sites attempt to block web scrapers for a variety of reasons. They do so by identifying scraper-like behavior and then blocking the IP address connected to that activity. Using a proxy helps prevent your IP from getting banned from the sites that you want to study.‌

The best proxies to use come from trusted sources like Rayobyte. You can use residential or rotating data center proxies to keep your IP address safe. Rotating data center proxies work well for trend scraping because they change regularly.‌

Meanwhile, residential proxies make your traffic look like it’s coming from someone’s home, so sites are more hesitant to block them. Either way, using proxies is critical to keep your scrapes running and keep your marketing plan on track.‌

Make Trends Part Of Your Marketing With Trend Scrapers

The digital world moves in real time, and so should your marketing campaigns. By web scraping trend data, you can make sure your marketing makes the most of search and social media trends.‌

With the right scraper and proxies, you’ll get all the trend data you need to be the first mover in any trend that matters to your business. If you want to learn more about residential proxies, you can explore the options available through Rayobyte.

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