What is content scraping or Web scraping? Content scraping, or web scraping, refers to when a bot downloads much or all of the content on a website, regardless of the website owner’s wishes.
Content scraping is a form of data scraping. It is basically always carried out by automated bots. Website scraper bots can sometimes download all of the content on a website in a matter of seconds.
Content scraping bots are often used to repurpose content for malicious purposes, such as duplicating the content for SEO on websites the attacker owns, violating copyrights and stealing organic traffic. Content scraping may involve filling out and submitting forms to access additional gated content, and as a byproduct this results in junk data in a company’s database. Additionally, fulfilling HTTP requests from bots takes up server resources that could otherwise be dedicated to human users. Lean more in the Cloudflare Learning Center.
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