Scraping Data From BBB | The Social Proxy

This article will demonstrate how scraping data from BBB works.

Getting To Know BBB

BBB (Better Business Bureau) is an organization that promotes market confidence. The company was established in 1912 and has been in operation for almost a century. On their official website, www.bbb.org, you will find company ratings and information.

The website is easy to use. You can peruse several business categories to choose a reputable company to patronize. There are both accredited and non-accredited firms listed on the website. The list can be easily sorted to display just accredited firms.

BBB has a school-grade rating system. Businesses can receive grades of A, A+, B, and so on, down to F. Accreditation is only granted to businesses who fulfill the BBB’s Standards For Trust. As of July 2020, the BBB platform had accredited about 400,000 North American businesses.

BBB is quite well-known in the United States. Notably, the company is most well-known in New York, where it attracts over one million unique users annually.

Why Scrape BBB?

Scraping data from BBB is an ideal method for obtaining information on firms in North America, particularly in the United States and Canada. You can obtain company-specific details such as the company’s name, services, phone numbers, address, and more.

This information can be quite beneficial for a variety of business applications. You can utilize them to generate leads and make more informed business decisions. Using the data, you may determine, for instance, which businesses are dominant in various regions, which businesses are rare, who your competitors are, and more.

Typically, you will explore the BBB website or even copy and paste the information you require. Assume you wish to access all New York BBB-accredited firms; doing so will require significant time and effort, and you may never complete the task.

Therefore, web scraping is optimal. It is a superior, more rapid, and more effective method for extracting data from websites.

Ways To Scrape BBB

Two essential online tools are required when scraping data from BBB: a web scraping bot and a proxy. The web scraping bot serves as both a web crawler and a web scraper. It crawls the BBB website to identify the desired category and extracts the results.

There are numerous web scraping bots available online, so you do not need to create one yourself. In addition, the bots are easy to use. Thus identifying the category, you wish to extract is simple.

The issue with the site scraping bot, though, is that it can be banned. Websites are hostile to bots since the majority of cyberattackers utilize them to start attacks. BBB could not only block your bot but also blacklist your IP address, preventing you from accessing the website.

Therefore, you require the second tool, a proxy. A proxy can conceal your true IP address and prevent websites from blocking your bot. There are thousands to millions of IP addresses on proxies.

Rotating IP addresses can prevent BBB from restricting your site scraping bot. Thus, none of your IP addresses will be blocked.

Best Proxies For Scraping Data From BBB 

You cannot scrape BBB without the greatest proxies, as your bot will always be blacklisted. You can pick between residential and datacenter proxies when it comes to proxies. Both have advantages and disadvantages, but residential proxies are more trustworthy.

However, the best proxies for BBB scraping are more dependent on where you acquire them. You can purchase an ineffective residential proxy from an unreliable proxy service.