Whether you’re a developer or not, one thing for sure is that scraping SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) can be a tough nut to crack on Google or any other search engine.
The main hold up is that search engines slow down data collection with technology such as Captchas which get automatically triggered when they detect there might not be a human behind the search.
One of the best alternatives to writing code from scratch (which is possible using JSOUP) is to use a pre-built tool that’s got an API to handle all the proxy heavy-lifting. Today we review Zenserp’s API which is considered to be one of the fastest and most efficient SERP API on the market.
Why SERP data is useful
SERP is the results page displayed by search engines in response to a search query from a user.
When a site ranks high for a keyword, they’ll show up at the top of the SERP results and more searchers click on it. But not all keywords are equal. Some keywords contain a large number of ads or feature snippets.
Feature snippets can be great if you’re looking to get lots of eyes on your information – but not so great if you’re targeting keywords specifically for clicks. By scraping a large volume of SERPs, you can quickly see where your team needs to focus their content efforts.
What languages are popular to build auto SERP scrapers?
There are various tools and libraries implemented in Java, as well as external APIs, that you can use to scrape SERPs. The most popular ones are JSOUP, HTMLUnit, and Jaunt. But guess what? Java is not even part of the five (05) best languages for web scraping.
According to Lime Proxies, the best languages for web scraping are Python, Node.Js, Ruby, C & C++, and PHP which are all incorporated in the Zenserp API.
Why scraping SERPs without a tool or JSOUP is so tricky
Having to scrape search results is an inevitable situation that frequently occurs when working in the blogosphere. The old ways of scraping SERPs is using tiny helpers, nifty micro tools, such as browser plugins or JavaScript snippets.
These methods still require you to manually visit each page to scrape the data. We’ve found that your efforts are usually blocked in 2 – 5 searches as your proxies don’t rotate automatically.
Deep Dive into Zenserp
Here are some of the features that make the Zenserp API different from the competition.
1. Highly Scalable
The API offers highly scalable results. Tools that cannot handle a volume of requests will give you unreliable and inaccurate results. It includes SERP APIs for shopping, news, and image searches.
2. Maximum speed
The Zenserp API is well-known for being among the few scraping API that offers a bulk endpoint for even faster scraping. The platform is designed in a way that its strong infrastructure allows it to provide quick results.
3. Affordable
Zenserp gives you the opportunity to pay for what you need. You have the choice between a generous free or paid plan starting at $29.99 a month. Zenserp only charges for successful responses. Invalid requests aren’t going to affect your usage volume.
4. Location-Based Proxies
The importance of this feature is more obvious since search results can differ depending on the place from where you proceed with the research. For instance, if your search for ‘coronavirus 2020’, you will get different results in different countries, hence location-based SEO is very important.
Using the scraping API, you can search for information by changing your location so you can get highly targeted and reliable results.
5. Highly accurate
No matter how you search for a keyword, be it manually or through the tool, you will get the same results. The results offered by Zenserp are accurate and trustworthy as the system can replicate real results.
6. Code Support
Whether you have a general question, feedback, or an offer request regarding their Google Search API, the support team is at your disposal.
How reliable is the API uptime?
API is a concept in software technology that essentially refers to how multiple applications can interact with and obtain data from one another. Uptime is the state of a server or service, and the reliability thereof.
Zenserp promises an uptime of 99,9 percent calculated on average over the past 12 months.
Zenserp API Pricing
Here are some details on the paid subscription options:
● Small – $29.99 per month and provides 5,000 search queries per month. This plan allows you to take advantage of all types of SERPs.
● Medium – $89.99 per month and allows 20,000 search queries per month. This plan grants access to all types of SERPs and also provides features such as batch endpoint, keyword search volume, and CPC.
● Large – $189.99 per month giving you 50,000 queries per month. It offers all the features of the Medium package, but with a few extra queries.
● Very Large – $399.99 per month. It is identical to the previous package but includes more queries – 120,000 per month. This plan is meant for businesses.
In Summary
Reviews show that Zenserp users like what the API has to offer. It’s a good option for agencies and SMB’s who need more insight into their search results and the ranking of their competitors.
While you can build a scraper from scratch yourself, dealing with location-based searches and Google’s sophisticated captchas can be a time consuming activity. Zenserp is a simple solution to scraping search engine result pages for valuable data. Click here to enter your query and get your first set of results.
