I then follow the guide on the Action Tip and click the “Select All” command to confirm the selection. Octoparse will select all data fields in the same pattern. Then follow the Action Tip, click “Select All Sub-element” to define extraction fields. Third, select the first job listing on the page.Second, set a paginate so we can extract all job listings from all pages.First, launch a new project using Octoparsewith the URL we got from with the search result of a data scientist in Seattle.( Check out this video to build a crawl to scrape job boards) And then we can take a wild guess about the next prospering area for the housing market. The goal here is to extract data scientist salaries in Seattle and relates to the housing market. To better illustrate how web scraping helps to get alternative data, I will take the housing market as an example. Web scraping automates the process of data extraction that allows you to scrape the data in the way you want. And the risk of inaccuracy is much lower than second-hand data from the data source provider. For a business with budgets, web scraping is a cheap alternative to get data. Up to now, there is no regulation that opposes the act of web scraping, yet there is ethical guidance we should follow.Ĭurrently, the most approachable solution at the moment is through web scraping. Yet, many people still have concerns over the legal implication of web scraping.Abruptly follow the trend may leave the business to debts. Data values - Management is not sure of the potential assets that data can bring.For some companies, they don’t have the capital to fund for the whole duration. Long-time - Some of the alternative data required a longer period.As Mr.Skibiski, the founder of Thasos concluded that some clients even pay more than $1 million a year. High fees - It is expensive to get valuable data.While the number of alternative data providers springs up in the recent decade, it can still be quite challenging for businesses to get a large volume of data from various sources due to the following reasons, Geo-location - Satellite image data on parking lots of a local retail store to measure the local economy.Īlternative data can be hard to get as it is genuinely less readily and less structured.These data can help marketers to shift consumer buying decisions online. Web Traffic - User visit time, user population and user activities on webpages.Some of the most sought after data include commercial data (product information, prices, etc), job listings, real estate data, and more. Web data can usually be extracted through the uses of spiders/web crawlers. Web-scraped Data - Data extracted from public websites.Some of the most popular types of alternative data are: According to a study, there are 482 datasets in 24 categories that have been identified in 2017. This is a good example of when the data doesn't necessarily look relevant can be a crucial strategic insight.īesides geo coordinates from smartphone devices, there are many other alternative data depend upon the specific industry, such as information being shared when people use an app, credit/debit card transaction data, patent data for a tech company, government contracts, and more. What Thasos used to help traders to predict stock move is alternative-data. Just as expected, Tesla Model 3 production had been doubled, and its share increase by 9.1%. Thasos then inferred that Tesla's stock price would rise. The significant swollen of overnight shift indicated the boost Tesla Model 3 production. Thasos, a mobile data provider, collected trillions of geographic coordinates emanated from smartphone devices in Tesla’s factory and found the overnight shift increased by 30% between June to October in 2018. Today, in the era of information explosion, the usage of alternative data has fastly expanded into various industries. The use and analysis of alternative data help them detect unforeseen risks and discover potential investment opportunities. One of the early adopters of alternative data is the hedge funds who took that data and incorporate into their investment models. Alternative data open doors to unique and timely insights which weren't available through traditional data sources. These data sets are generally less accessible and structured than traditional datasets. Alternative data is often perceived as big data or ' exhaust data', owing to its scale and complexity.

Octoparse alternatives