What is scraping?
Scraping is a process for extracting, saving and copying content from a website. It can be done manually or using software. The content is often used in a modified design on the user's own website. This is usually web scraping. It is also known as screen scraping. However, depending on the situation, anyone who uses scraping infringes copyright. The process can also be considered spam (for example, when copying and pasting a product text).
What does scraping mean for SEO?
SEOs repeatedly use scraping methods with the help of tools to analyze competitor pages. If a page is checked for certain keywords, the SERPs are accessed. This is already a form of scraping. Scraping is also used to provide the latest timetables and weather data. Nobody has anything against these methods.
However, SEOs should avoid the unauthorized variants. Simply copying a description text from an online store and pasting it on your own site is unauthorized scraping. Ultimately, this leads to duplicate content, which has a negative effect on the ranking. Webmasters can prevent scraping. Among other things, security queries can be inserted. Optimizing the server firewall also contributes to more security against scraping.
