How To Use Google Sheets For Web Scraping With AI

Scraping knowledge from webpages is a comparatively superior activity that, till just lately, required a level of technical ability. The concept of diving into code or scripts for knowledge extraction appeared overwhelming for a lot of, myself included.

Information scraping can energy many search engine marketing duties, corresponding to auditing, competitor evaluation, and analyzing web site and knowledge construction.

Google sheets affords easy options to assist.

A kind of options is the IMPORTXML operate that permits customers to scrape webpage knowledge utilizing just some parameters. It makes knowledge extraction accessible to a wider viewers, particularly to those that weren’t well-versed in programming languages.

Whereas this operate is spectacular, the actual breakthrough got here with the adoption and integration of generative AI into the combination.

On this information, we’ll present you how you can use Google Sheets and AI, notably ChatGPT, for internet scraping without having superior coding expertise.

The Instruments: AI And Chatbots

We are actually all aware of AI, ChatGPT, and comparable chatbots.

In truth, many people use options like ChatGPT to jot down our personal code, scripts, and packages with or without very restricted programming information.

It is so simple as offering detailed directions within the type of prompts and dealing with the chatbot to construct instruments that solely till just lately we believed had been means above us.

However most significantly, these are instruments which might be deeply altering the way in which we strategy our day-to-day work.

For instance, if we ask ChatGPT the next query, “What’s the IMPORTXML operate and the way can I exploit it in Google Sheets to scrape the title of an HTML webpage? Present the required code to do this in Google Sheets,” the response is extraordinarily correct. In a matter of seconds, we have now our method prepared to make use of in Google Sheets.

However to be trustworthy, that was a really fundamental and easy activity that we may have simply accomplished with out ChatGPT.

The Process

So, how does this work if we need to extract knowledge that could be a bit much less customary in comparison with a web page title or description?

For instance, how does this work if we need to extract the next knowledge from the PPC entrance web page of Search Engine Journal?

Listing all featured articles, their authors, the hyperlink URLs, and the article description for the columns listed on https://www.searchenginejournal.com/class/paid-media/pay-per-click/.

Can we do this instantly with ChatGPT?

Executing With ChatGPT

When creating prompts, it took a number of makes an attempt to offer directions that had been detailed sufficient for the chatbot to completely perceive the target of the duty and return good outcomes.

In lots of instances, it felt just like the AI was beneath strain to return fast outcomes regardless of their accuracy.

However let me clarify.

The duty was to research the web page and checklist all featured articles, their authors, the hyperlink URLs, and the outline for every of the 30 articles listed on the web page. Then compile the information right into a desk and at last export it right into a CSV file.

Easy proper?

At first, ChatGPT returned only a pattern of seven articles and solely their titles and URLs; after a reworked immediate, it managed to checklist and export all 30 articles and their hyperlinks.

Now, that was good. So, to finish the duty, we simply wanted so as to add the authors and the article descriptions.

However right here is the place the bot stumbled and was not in a position to present an correct description of every article regardless of us offering examples of the web page factor it wanted to search out and replica.

ChatGPT stored ignoring the directions and offering its personal article descriptions time and time once more.

ChatGPT even failed once we tried with a distinct strategy and downloaded and uploaded a duplicate of the web page HTML.

This time, it was in a position to present correct knowledge for seven articles however couldn’t go previous that. The problem reported:

“…the construction and content material of the web page current vital challenges for complete knowledge extraction in a single session.

The web page is kind of in depth and sophisticated, and it’s not possible to extract all 30 articles within the present format of interplay.”

ChatGPT + Google Sheets

So, going again to IMPORTXML and Google Sheets.

This time, getting ChatGPT to offer the formulation for every discipline was like a breeze.

Listed below are a few of the formulation, as prompt by the chatbot, you could simply attempt your self in Google Sheets to extract:

Title

=IMPORTXML("https://www.searchenginejournal.com/class/paid-media/pay-per-click/", "//*[@id='archives-wrapper']/article/div/div[2]/h2/a")

Creator Title

=IMPORTXML("https://www.searchenginejournal.com/class/paid-media/pay-per-click/", "//*[@id='archives-wrapper']/article/div/div[2]/p[1]/a")

URL Hyperlink

=IMPORTXML("https://www.searchenginejournal.com/class/paid-media/pay-per-click/", "//*[@id='archives-wrapper']/article/div/div[2]/h2/a/@href")

Description

=IMPORTXML("https://www.searchenginejournal.com/class/paid-media/pay-per-click/", "//*[@id='archives-wrapper']/article/div/div[2]/p[2]")

Very quickly, we had been in a position to extract the information into the spreadsheet.

Moreover, through the use of merely constructed nested formulation, we are able to rapidly pull the information from a number of pages on the similar time.

Within the instance under, I used to be in a position to extract the identical knowledge associated to every article (title, writer, URL hyperlink, and outline) for the primary 10 pages of the PPC part.

The result’s a complete of 300 articles scraped in lower than a minute!

Evaluating The Two

So, how do ChatGPT vs. ChatGPT + Google Sheets IMPORTXML examine?

In my expertise, I couldn’t discover a straightforward and fast means to make use of ChatGPT to scrape the information I used to be in search of – thoughts you, that doesn’t imply that this isn’t doable, and there is likely to be a number of methods to do that, however I didn’t discover any.

What labored for me was a mixture of the completely different instruments, and that served me rather well for my supposed goal.

ChatGPT was extraordinarily helpful for writing the IMPORTXML formulation I wanted to make use of in Google Sheets, and people formulation did the remainder.

An extra bonus of the ChatGPT + Google Sheets possibility is you could simply use the free 3.5 model of ChatGPT and get the instrument to construct your IMPORTXML formulation, as an alternative of getting model 4 to scan the web page and extract the information.

Key Takeaway

This highlights a crucial side of how AI has reworked how we expect and work.

One of the best instrument for the job isn’t merely utilizing AI, Google Sheets, or any particular software program alone however moderately a mixture of instruments and expertise.

It’s on this built-in strategy that we develop workflows which might be environment friendly and efficient, thus bettering our general productiveness.

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