Web-Scraping

Extract Website Metadata with an API: Title, Description, OG Tags

Every website has metadata hidden in its HTML — titles, descriptions, Open Graph tags, favicons, Twitter cards, and more. Extracting this metadata is essential for building link previews, SEO analysis tools, competitive intelligence dashboards, and content aggregators. In this guide, we’ll show you how to use the ToolCenter Metadata API to extract structured metadata from any URL, with practical examples and real-world use cases. What Is Website Metadata? Website metadata is information embedded in a page’s HTML <head> section that describes the page’s content. It includes: ...

Web Scraping vs APIs: When to Use Each (2026 Guide)

The Data Extraction Dilemma Every developer eventually needs to pull data from the web. Whether it’s monitoring competitor prices, aggregating content, or building a search engine, you have two main options: web scraping and APIs. Each approach has strengths and trade-offs. This guide helps you decide which to use — and when to combine them. What Is Web Scraping? Web scraping means programmatically extracting data from web pages by parsing their HTML. You send HTTP requests, receive HTML responses, and pull out the data you need. ...

How to Block Cookie Banners in Automated Screenshots

Cookie consent banners are the bane of automated screenshots. You set up a beautiful monitoring pipeline, and every screenshot has a giant popup covering half the page. In this guide, we will explore multiple techniques to block, hide, or dismiss cookie banners in automated screenshots. Why Cookie Banners Are a Problem Since GDPR and similar privacy regulations, nearly every website displays a cookie consent banner on first visit. For automated screenshot tools, every visit is a first visit because there are no stored cookies. This means: ...