How to scrape data from Amazon: The beginner's guide

Learning to scrape product data from the Amazon website can seem complex at first, but you can simplify the process by using a scraper API, so you don’t have to build a scraper or manage proxies yourself. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to get data from Amazon using a scraper API, like the one provided by SOAX.

What is web scraping?

Web scraping is the process of automatically extracting data from websites, web pages, and online documents. It involves using specialized software or algorithms to navigate a website, locate and extract specific data, and store it in a structured format for further analysis or use. You can use web scraping for a variety of purposes, including market research, data mining, and monitoring website changes.

In the context of Amazon, web scraping allows you to extract data about products, such as product titles, prices, images, and reviews. You can use this data to analyze market trends, track competitor prices, and optimize product listings.

What is web scraping and how does it work? >

Benefits of scraping Amazon product data

For ecommerce businesses, scraping Amazon data can open up a whole world of possibilities. Some of the main ways the data can help you includes:

• Market research
• Price optimization
• Product optimization
• Data-driven decision making

Market research

Conducting market research on Amazon helps businesses find new ways to grow. For example, analyzing trends might reveal that people are buying more eco-friendly products, so in response, you could create your own green line. Or, if you see that your competitor's product has lots of bad reviews about being too expensive, you could make yours cheaper to attract those customers. By paying attention to what people are buying and saying on Amazon, you can make smart choices about what to sell and how to price it, helping your business to succeed.

Price optimization

By tracking competitor prices, you can optimize your own prices to stay competitive. This can lead to increased sales and improved profit margins. You can also ensure that people do not sell your products below the minimum advertised price (MAP).

Product optimization

Reading what customers say about products, both good and bad, helps you see where you can improve your own. You can use this feedback to make your products better and change how you describe them online. This can increase customer satisfaction and boost your sales.

Data-driven decision making

Having the latest information about products helps you make smart choices about what to sell and how to promote it. You can avoid wasting time and money on things that won't work and focus on strategies that get results. This means a smoother, more profitable business.

What product data can you scrape from Amazon?

Using an Amazon scraper API, you can extract Amazon data related to products, sellers, reviews, and other elements of the platform.

Product information

• Core details: Product name, price, ASIN (“Amazon Standard Identification Number” which acts as the unique product code for each item on the platform), brand, description, specifications, category, variations.
• Media: Images, videos, 360-degree views, image URL.

Customer interactions

• Reviews: Content, reviewer name, rating, date, helpful votes.
• Q&A: Customer questions and seller/customer answers.

Seller and sales data

• Seller details: Name, rating, fulfillment method.
• Sales and ranking: Best Sellers Rank (BSR), sales rank history, estimated units sold.

Additional data points

• Availability: Stock status, shipping info, Prime eligibility
• Promotions: Current deals, lightning deals.
• Related products: Frequently bought together, customers also viewed, sponsored products
• Metadata: Release date, UPC/EAN, dimensions, manufacturer info.

Exporting the scraped data into a CSV file or other structured data format allows you to efficiently manage and analyze your data in a database.

Get set up to scrape Amazon

If you purchase a web scraper API for Amazon, you generally don’t need additional tools to get basic data. The API itself handles the complex parts of web scraping, like navigating Amazon’s pages, dealing with CAPTCHAs, data extraction, and response formatting, so you don’t need to learn how to build a custom scraper from scratch.

If you just want to see how the scraping API works and get some data, you can technically use tools like Postman or curl to make API requests and get data without writing any code. However, to use the API effectively - especially if you want to automate data collection, process the data, or integrate it with your system - you’ll need some basic programming tools.

• Python or another programming language: While you don’t strictly need Python, using a programming language makes it easier to send requests to the API and handle the responses. Python is just one of many options, but it’s popular for this purpose because it’s easy to learn and has great support for handling APIs.
• Libraries: Python offers several libraries to simplify interaction with APIs and handle JSON data. While requests and jason are commonly used for HTTP requests and JSON processing, consider exploring modern alternatives like aiohttp (for asynchronous, potentially higher-performance networking) or httpx (for a streamlined, modern HTTP client interface), especially in Python 3 projects.
• Virtual environment: A virtual environment in Python isn’t strictly necessary to use a scraper API, but it’s a best practice that can save you a lot of hassle down the road. When you create a virtual environment, you’re essentially setting up a separate, contained directory on your system where you can install libraries and packages specific to your project. It makes managing dependencies simpler and keeps your project environment clean and consistent.

There are some additional tools you might need, depending on the scale of your project and your existing systems:

1. You might need some programming knowledge to integrate the scraper API with your systems. For example, you may need to write a script or an application that sends requests to the API and processes the data it returns.
2. If you’re collecting large amounts of data, you may need a database or another storage solution to manage and analyze this data.
3. While the API handles most complexities, you might need to implement error handling in your system to deal with issues like request limits, timeouts, or unexpected data formats.
4. You might want to set up automated scripts to regularly query the API at intervals to keep your data up-to-date.

How to scrape Amazon data

Step 1: Install Python

Download Python:

Go to the Python website and download the latest version (Python 3.x).

Windows installation:

Run the downloaded installer. During installation, make sure to check the box that says Add Python to PATH. This will allow you to run Python from the command line. Then click Install Now and follow the prompts.

macOS installation:

Run the downloaded .pkg file and follow the installation instructions.

Linux installation:

Python 3 is usually pre-installed on most Linux distributions. If not, you can install it using your package manager. For example, in a Debian-based distro, you can use:

Open a terminal or command prompt. > Type python --version or python3 --version and press Enter. > You should see the installed version of Python.

Step 2: Sign up for a scraper API service

1. Sign up: Go to the SOAX website and sign up for our Amazon scraper API. You can trial our scraper APIs for three days for just $1.99.
2. Get API access credentials: After signing up, you'll receive an API key that you’ll use to authenticate your requests to the API.

Step 3: Familiarize yourself with the API documentation

Access the API documentation. This will include details on:

• Endpoints (URLs you’ll send requests to.)
• Required parameters  (e.g., Amazon product URL or ASIN)
• Response structure (what the returned data will look like)
• Rate limits (how many requests you can make per minute/hour)
• Error handling (how to interpret and handle errors)

Look for specific endpoints related to the data you want to scrape, such as product names, ratings, prices, images, and descriptions.

Step 4: Set up your development environment

Choose a programming language: If you’re new, Python is a good choice because it’s beginner-friendly and has many libraries for handling APIs.

Install required libraries: If you use Python, you'll need: requests for making HTTP requests, and json for handling the JSON data returned by the API.

You can install these by running:

Step 5: Write your first API request

Set up your script: Start by writing a simple script to send a request to the API. Here’s an example in Python:

import requests

# Your API key
api_key = 'your_api_key_here'

# Amazon product URL or ASIN
amazon_product_url = 'https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08N5WRWNW'

# API endpoint for scraping Amazon (from SOAX documentation)
endpoint = 'https://api.soax.com/v2/amazon/product'

# Set up the request headers including your API key
headers = {
    'Authorization': f'Bearer {api_key}',
}

# Set up the request parameters (from SOAX documentation)
params = {
    'url': amazon_product_url,
}

# Send the GET request to the API
response = requests.get(endpoint, headers=headers, params=params)

# Check if the request was successful
if response.status_code == 200:
    # Parse the JSON response
    data = response.json()
    print(data)
else:
    print(f"Failed to retrieve data: {response.status_code}")

Run the script: Execute the script in your terminal or IDE. This will send a request to the SOAX API, which will scrape the data from the Amazon website and return it in a structured format.

Step 6: Extract and process the data

The API will return a JSON object with the product data. You need to parse this JSON to extract the specific pieces of data you want. Example of parsing the response:

if response.status_code == 200:
    data = response.json()
    
    # Extract specific details
    product_name = data.get('name')
    product_price = data.get('price')
    product_rating = data.get('rating')
    product_description = data.get('description')
    product_images = data.get('images')

    print(f"Product Name: {product_name}")
    print(f"Price: {product_price}")
    print(f"Rating: {product_rating}")
    print(f"Description: {product_description}")
    print(f"Images: {product_images}")

Store or display the data: Depending on your needs, you can either display this data, store it in a database, or save it to a file (like a CSV or JSON file). Example of saving data to a JSON file:

with open('product_data.json', 'w') as json_file:
    json.dump(data, json_file, indent=4)

Step 8: Deactivate the virtual environment

Deactivate: When you’re done working in your virtual environment, you can deactivate it by simply running:

This will return you to the system's default Python environment.

Step 9: Scale and automate

• Automation: If you need to scrape data regularly, consider setting up a cron job or a scheduled task that runs your script at specific intervals.
• Scaling: As you scale up, you might need to manage API rate limits or handle large volumes of data by distributing the scraping across multiple servers or using cloud services.

Is scraping Amazon legal and ethical?

Amazon scraping can be both legal and ethical, depending on the purpose and method of scraping. Here are some factors to consider:

• Amazon product data is publicly available, which means that scraping it is not necessarily a violation of privacy or intellectual property rights.
• Amazon’s terms of service prohibit scraping for certain purposes, such as resale or competitive analysis. However, they do allow scraping for personal use or research purposes.
• Using fake or misleading user agents to scrape Amazon product data can be considered deceptive and may violate Amazon’s terms of service.
• Scraping Amazon product data at a high rate can be considered abusive and may violate Amazon’s terms of service.

To ensure that your scraping activities are legal and ethical, it’s important to:

• Carefully review Amazon’s terms of service to ensure that your scraping activities comply with their policies.
• Use legitimate user agents that accurately identify your software or algorithm.
• Respect Amazon’s rate limits to avoid overwhelming their servers.
• Use the scraped data responsibly and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.

By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your data collection is both legal and ethical, allowing you to extract valuable Amazon data without violating any rules or regulations.

Why use SOAX to scrape Amazon?

With SOAX you can stop worrying about the technical stuff and focus on what matters: using Amazon’s data for your benefit. Our Amazon scraper API has several advantages that simplify and boost your Amazon data extraction process, overcoming common web scraping challenges:

• Built-in proxy rotation: Amazon has anti-scraping mechanisms, including IP blocking, to prevent unauthorized data collection. Our Amazon scraper API draws from our huge pool of residential and mobile proxies to rotate your IP address with each request. This makes your scraping activity look like regular user browsing, reducing the risk of getting blocked and ensuring continuous data extraction.
• Scrape from anywhere: Need data from specific locations? Our geotargeting feature allows you to scrape Amazon from different regions so you can get location-specific product details.
• CAPTCHA handling: CAPTCHAs are a common problem in web scraping. Our API has advanced CAPTCHA solving capabilities, either automatically bypassing or solving CAPTCHAs for you. This saves you time and effort so your scraper can run continuously without manual intervention.
• Structured data output: Raw HTML data is hard to process and analyze. Our API extracts and structures the product information you need (titles, prices, descriptions, reviews, images) into a clean and organized format (JSON or CSV). No need to parse and clean the data, just integrate it into your applications or databases.
• Reliability and scalability: Our infrastructure can handle any scraping volume. Whether you need data from a few pages or thousands, we deliver real-time data without slowing down.
• Easy to use: Our API is developer friendly with clear documentation. You’ll be up and running in no time, focusing on using the data instead of wrestling with complex setups.