Websites using Commoncrawl

Okay, let s break down Common Crawl, covering its overview, revenue model (or lack thereof), alternatives, pricing (also, lack thereof), and customer care details.

Common Crawl: Overview

Common Crawl is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing a publicly accessible, open dataset of web crawl data. Think of it as a vast archive of the web, scraped periodically and made available for free.

Key Features:

• Massive Scale: It crawls billions of web pages each month, accumulating an enormous dataset.
• Open and Free: The data is freely available to anyone for research, analysis, and innovation.
• Raw Data: It primarily provides the raw HTML content and metadata (like URLs and timestamps), leaving the processing and analysis to the users.
• Regular Updates: Crawl data is typically released monthly, though this can sometimes vary.
• Focus on Accessibility: Common Crawl aims to democratize access to web data, benefiting researchers, startups, and others.
• Non-Profit Status: It operates as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.

Revenue Model (or Lack Thereof)

Common Crawl does not have a revenue model in the traditional sense. It is a non-profit organization funded by:

• Donations: It relies heavily on donations from organizations and individuals that benefit from its data.
• Grants: It receives funding from foundations and other institutions supporting open-source initiatives.
• In-Kind Contributions: Organizations often provide resources like storage and bandwidth as a form of contribution.

Alternatives to Common Crawl

If Common Crawl doesn t quite meet your needs, here are some alternatives, each with different strengths and weaknesses:

• Commercial Web Scraping APIs:

  • Apify, Bright Data, Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub), Oxylabs: These companies offer managed web scraping services, often with features like proxy rotation, JavaScript rendering, and data parsing.
    • Pros: Easier to use, more structured data output, better reliability, potentially faster results.
    • Cons: Expensive, restrictive licensing, less transparency.
  • ScrapeNinja: Offers API to extract data from websites, supports proxies and JavaScript rendering.
    • Pros: Easy to use API, cheaper than other options, good for small projects.
    • Cons: More limited data extraction options.

• Custom Web Scraping:

  • Roll Your Own: Developing your own web scraper using libraries like Scrapy (Python), Puppeteer (JavaScript), or Beautiful Soup (Python).
    • Pros: Full control, highly customizable, potentially cheaper for large-scale projects.
    • Cons: Requires technical skills, complex to maintain, significant resource investment.

• Google BigQuery Public Datasets (Web Data):

  • Google provides a subset of Common Crawl data, cleaned and structured, for querying within BigQuery.
    • Pros: Easier to query and analyze, faster to get started, well-structured data.
    • Cons: Limited data compared to the full Common Crawl, Google BigQuery costs apply.

• Academic Datasets/Research Crawls:

  • Some academic institutions and research projects maintain specialized web crawl datasets for specific research purposes.
    • Pros: Can be more targeted, may include additional metadata.
    • Cons: Less generally applicable, can be harder to access.

Pricing (Common Crawl)

The best part about Common Crawl? It s free! There is no cost associated with downloading and using their dataset.

• You will, however, incur costs related to storage, data processing, and analysis.

Customer Care Details

As a non-profit, Common Crawl s approach to customer care is less about traditional support and more about community engagement and resource sharing:

• Documentation: Their website has extensive documentation on how to access, download, and use the data. This is the primary source of information.
• Community Forum: The Common Crawl website has a user forum where you can ask questions and connect with other users, developers, and researchers. This is probably the best way to get help.
• GitHub Repository: The Common Crawl code and scripts are hosted on GitHub. This can be useful for understanding how the system works and for contributing improvements.
• Email Support: While not a dedicated support channel, you can often get in touch with the organization by email via the contact information on their website. Response times may vary and aren t guaranteed.
• No Dedicated Support Team: Because of their non-profit status, there is no dedicated team to provide individual customer support. This is why relying on the documentation and forums is important.

In Summary

Common Crawl is a valuable resource for accessing massive quantities of web data at no cost. However, it requires a degree of technical expertise to work with. The lack of a revenue model means there s limited traditional customer support, so self-reliance and community engagement are key. It s a fantastic tool for those who can handle raw data and need large-scale web crawls, especially within research and innovation. When choosing between Common Crawl and its alternatives, carefully consider your technical skills, resource availability, budget, data requirements, and the urgency of your needs.