Screen scraping target: B2B portals

2009-11-27

While many different firms are a target for screen scraping activity, there are some that are more at threat than others. According to Sentor MSS, online business-to-business portals are particularly at risk and are regular targets for screen scraping.

For such portals, keeping hold of data can be particularly important, considering that their business relies on being able to provide comprehensive listings. The Analyzing Enterprise Portals report, which Research and Markets has recently added to its offering, has pointed to the fact that organisations rely on these sites to stay ahead of the competition.

According to the report, firms also look to portals to help improve relationships with important suppliers or enhancing their customer service. Businesses will also use these services to trace supplier behaviour, enabling them to make regular service improvements. To keep users of their sites happy, portals may want to keep a firm grip on their data so that rival services who scraped information do not reap the benefits.

But why are business-to-business portals a notable target for screen scrapers? Well, Sentor notes that this form of data appropriation allows competing firms to take information that the scraped organisation had gathered, putting funds and effort into bringing it together for publication.

Similar sites can look to raid business-to-business portals by using programs designed to scrape listings, taking the data and using it for their own website, the company points out. Now that they have the information, having spent little money, they will be able to offer services at a lower cost and may even have larger listings because of its screen scraping work, Sentor notes.

Director of product management for global data quality at Pitney Bowes Business Insight Navin Sharma recently recognised the importance of business data. Writing for ZDNet News, Mr Sharma said that every business decision is reliant on a company's underlying data. Despite this, he added, many firms find it hard to manage their data.

With this in mind, companies would do well to protect their data, given that it appears to be so important for firms, including those running business-to-business portals. As seen above, screen scraping is something that can impact upon a company's data, so they may want to get protection from such information appropriation. Sentor's automated anti scraping surveillance network, or ASSASSIN, is something that can certainly help.

It seems that the issue of letting other companies use data has been an issue in a number of industries, including the property sector. In other recent news, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) changed its Multiple Listing and Internet Data Exchange Policy to note that real estate brokers "are not required to prevent indexing of their websites by recognised search engines".

According to Search Engine Land, the NAR had previously agreed with a local decision in Indianapolis earlier this year which stipulated that real estate agents would not be allowed to let search engines index property listings on their sites if they belonged to other brokers or agents.

The publication cited the Indianapolis board as saying: "The National Association of Realtors is in agreement with our interpretation of the policy that the above described practice of 'indexing your website' as you have called it, is a method of scraping or reproducing the data."

Of course, firms may not want their information taken, whether through screen scraping or another method, and such companies would be wise to get some form of protection from such acts.