Amazon Scraping: How to do it? [Your Easy Guide]

With over 350 million products on Amazon, this platform is home to large amounts of data.

While such data is crucial for personal and business use, getting it one by one would take time. Thus, it’s best to scrape it from Amazon.

Data scraping is a way to get information from websites automatically. This process uses special tools for automation.

You can get data like product details, prices, or reviews with Amazon scraping. Such datasets can be helpful for analysis or comparison.

The process can seem complex, but you can do it with the right tools and a detailed guide.

This article will guide you on how Amazon scraping works and how to do it legally and effectively.

Learn How To Scrape Data on Amazon

Amazon is a platform with millions of data, from product prices, ratings, and even reviews. All these data are crucial for many purposes, so many users want to scrape them.However, scraping data on Amazon can be time-consuming if not automated with tools or bots. 

Some common reasons users need to scrape data on Amazon are:

• Product Ratings - Scraping this data can help you find high-rated items and learn the market trend.
• Sold Products - Scraping this data can help you know the best-selling items and give you an idea of what to sell.
• Product Prices - Scraping this data can help you compare prices and find the cheapest. It can also help business owners stay competitive with their pricing.

Scraping data on Amazon can be difficult if you don’t have the right skills. This platform has a complex structure that's challenging to manage. 

Requirements For Scraping Amazon

It is essential to understand what you need to scrape Amazon correctly. In this section, you’ll learn what you need for scraping Amazon, like tools and techniques to get data from their website.

There are two typical methods of scraping data on Amazon:

• Using Python to write codes to get data automatically

• Web scraping tools like NimbleWay or SmartProxy. These tools don’t require coding skills to get data from Amazon.

Amazon Scraping Requirement for Python

To start scraping data on Amazon using Python, you’ll need the following tools and requirements:

• Code Editor: You can choose any editor of your choice. Examples are VS Code, Atom, or Sublime text.
• Python: Ensure that Python is installed on your computer before you begin. You can use Python version 3.8 or any newer version for this process.
• BeautifulSoup: BeautifulSoup is a Python library that works best for quick scraping. This tool lets you find specific data from your target URL by specifying the HTML tags or classes.
• Requests: You'll also need the Requests Module for this process. It's another Python Library that will let you send HTTP requests on Amazon using Python.

To check if your computer has Python, open the command prompt on a Windows or Mac terminal and type the following script:

Press Enter, and it will show the installed Python version.

Now that you know the requirements for Amazon scraping, the following are the steps for scraping products on Amazon using Python.

Amazon Products Scraping Steps (Python)

To scrape Amazon products with Python, you must follow specific steps. By doing this, you can gain helpful information.

Step 1: Open your code editor. This app is where you’ll write your Python code.

Step 2: Install the required libraries: BeautifulSoup and Requests.

To do so, open your computer’s command prompt for Windows or terminal for Mac and type these commands:

Step 3: Create a new file in your code editor and save it with a Python extension. Example ‘amazonproducts.py’.

Step 4: In your Python script, import the necessary libraries by typing these codes.

Step 5: Manually search for the product you want to scrape on Amazon and copy the URL of the search results page.

Step 6: Send a Get request to the URL and Parse the HTML content using BeautifulSoup. In your Python script, type in the code:

Step 7: Using BeautifulSoup, you can find specific data from the URL by specifying the HTML tags or classes. Find the data by typing this command:

Step 8: After extracting the data, you can process and store it in your desired format, like writing it to a CSV file or storing it in a database. 

Scraping reviews is similar to scraping products. Here's how to do it.

Steps to Scrape Amazon Reviews (Python)

Reviews are necessary because they can tell you what’s good and bad about a product that can help your business.

Here’s a guide on how to scrape data from Amazon using Python:

Step 1: Open your code editor. This app is where you’ll write your Python code.

Step 2: Install the BeautifulSoup and request libraries. To do so, write the script below in the code editor.

Step 3: Create a new file and save it with a Python extension. Example ‘amazonreviews.py’. This file is where you will be writing your code.

Step 4: In your Python script, import the necessary libraries by typing these codes.

Step 5: Manually search for the Amazon product page that contains the reviews you want to scrape and copy the URL of the search results page.

Step 6: Send a Get request to the URL and Parse the HTML content using BeautifulSoup. In your Python script, type in the code:

Step 7: Find the HTML element that contains the reviews with the BeautifulSoup ‘find_all’ function. Amazon uses ‘div’ tags with classes for product reviews:

Step 8: Process the reviews extracted, save them to a file, or print them:

Step 9: Save the Python script file. Open your computer’s command or terminal, navigate to the folder where you saved the script, and run it using this command:

The script will then execute, and you’ll see the extracted reviews printed or saved based on the storage code.

Steps to Scrape Amazon (Amazon Scrapers)

Scraping data with these tools can change depending on the device that you are using. Here’s a general guide to follow regardless of which app you are using:

Step 1: Choose a tool that fits your needs and create an account if needed.

Step 2: Copy the page URL with the product details or reviews you want to scrape.

Step 3: Paste the URL in the tool and select the part you want to scrape.

Step 4: Start scraping!

Step 5: After scraping, save the data. It is usually a CSV file.

Step 6: Now you can use the data for what you want

Benefits and Risks of Amazon Scraping

Amazon data scraping can give you helpful information but can be risky and raise ethical questions. Considering the advantages and disadvantages before scraping data on Amazon is essential.

Best Tools for Amazon Scraping

These tools help you collect and handle data faster:

NimbleWay

NimbleWay is a unique tool that effectively collects data from Amazon, thanks to its robust web crawling features. 

NimbleWay Main Features:

Here are some features that make NimbleWay a strong choice for scraping Amazon:

• Collects data automatically from Amazon pages.
• Changes IP addresses to avoid Amazon blocks.
• Imitates human interaction to prevent scraping alarms.
• Easy-to-use interface
• Can handle big tasks

Pricing: Starts at $255 per month

Octoparse

Octoparse is another web scraping tool with features designed for Amazon scraping. It is a good option for web scraping Amazon without writing codes.

Octoparse Main Features:

• No need for codes, just clicks
• Schedules time for regular scraping.
• Download the scraped data as CSV files or Excel.
• Can handle big scraping tasks using cloud services. 

Pricing: Starts at $75 per month

Apify

Apify is a powerful web scraping tool with special features for Amazon scraping. Here are some features that make Apify the best tool for Amazon scraping:

Apify Main Features:

• Stores data in cloud services, databases, or other files.
• Select specific parts of webpages using CSS or XPath
• Manage retries, timeouts, and proxies automatically.
• Scrape data from Amazon efficiently. 

Pricing: Starts at $49 per month with a pay-as-you-go 

Conclusion

Scraping Amazon is a smart way to gather information from the website automatically. It helps to know about product prices and reviews without having to do it manually.

By scraping Amazon, businesses can learn customer's preferences, price ranges, and ratings. However, following Amazon rules and seeking permission before web scraping is best.

There are different methods to scrape Amazon data, like using special tools or Python. You can use tools like NimbleWay, Octoparse, or Apify to help you scrape.