Understanding Internet Spiders

What is a Spider?

Technically speaking, internet spiders are computer programs that are capable of searching through a vast quantity of data in order to identify relevant results. Internet spiders are written using computer code to specify algorithms that can systematically solve certain kinds of problem – such as retrieving data from the World Wide Web that contains characteristics that make it of value or relevance to the programmer who wrote the “spider”.

In our experience, people tend to be most familiar with internet “spiders” in the context of search engines. Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Ask, use computer programs referred to as “spiders” (also called "crawlers" or “robots”) to investigate the Web for new and updates sites, in order to keep their databases up to date. The findings of these spiders are then are integrated into each search engine’s database of archived sites to provide to visitors that use its search query function.

However, internet spiders are not only utilized by search engines. Internet spiders are simply algorithmically designed programs that look for information and retrieve it.

How Do We Design Spiders?

BIO-Informant’s technology specialists work in collaboration with our business analysts and scientific expects to generate internet spiders that can be used to retrieve accurate and current (real-time!) business intelligence that can be utilized by management of life science companies. While we primarily write spiders that search the World Wide Web, in some instances, we have met the requests of clients be writing spiders for other networks, such as internal networks of large pharmaceutical and drug discovery companies.

Spiders are our Specialty

While we recognize that there are manual methods of generating business intelligence, we believe that the high-tech nature of the life science industry means that management is best served by accurate, real-time business intelligence produced at cost-effective prices through streamlined search technologies. For this reason, we specialize in designing internet spiders, including pre-packaged services as well as custom tracking services designed to meet the unique needs of our clients.

Spiders Save Businesses Money

Traditional methods of generating business intelligence rely of labor-intensive, human-driven methodology. In contrast, once a spider has been created and customized for a particular usage, it can continue to provide updated data on an on-going basis with minimal maintenance work.

Our Spiders are Versatile

Our spiders have variable elements in them that we customize to the needs of individual clients. For instance, our Competitor Tracking spiders allow us to enter the names of competitors of interest to each new client that requests this service.

Custom Spiders

If you have a need of extracting information from the internet, we can make a spider to do that work efficiently. Spiders are capable of tracking your competitors marketing communication, press releases distribution, new product launches, or pricing adjustments. They can also be used to determine how often and what types of people are searching online for products that your company may be interested in offering (age, gender, geographic location, etc.)

Importantly, spiders can also be used to generate Custom Email Marketing Lists to help you communicate with prospective customers.

(Phone) 703-859-7617         info@bioinformant.com       (Fax) 614-352-2369

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