Parsing Ozon to analyze prices, products and competitors
Parsing Ozon is a great idea for those who want to understand the market and get ahead of their competitors. After all, Ozon is the largest Russian marketplace with millions of products. Let's figure out how Ozon parsing will help business.
Why parse Ozon?
Ozon is a platform with live data: prices, stock of goods, new positions, customer ratings and opinions that change every day. Unlike reports and guides, which are out of date the moment they are published, Ozon data provides an accurate picture of the state of the market.
Here's what this means in practice: if a competitor has a new price or promotion, scraping allows you to find out about it in a matter of minutes. Staying ahead even by a few hours can give you an edge in your sales strategies.
How does Ozon scraping help your business?
Let's say you sell household goods and compete with other sellers on Ozon. Your goals are to set prices correctly and understand which items are in demand. Parsing helps to collect data on prices, positions and changes in the assortment of competitors. With this data in hand, you can set up a strategy like this:
- Analysis of competitors' prices. The parser collects prices of similar products. This means that you can find out the minimum and maximum prices on the market, the average cost, as well as the frequency of discounts. Let's say your competitor has sharply reduced the price of a popular product. You learn about this, analyze whether you are willing to lower the price in response or want to draw attention to another product. Prompt response is what gives the advantage.
- Studying the assortment. The parser will collect a list of products that competitors are introducing or removing from sales. You will also learn about new products. Let's say competitors start selling new coffee machines. But you don’t have them yet. So it's time to update the products.
- Demand Estimation. Parsing reviews and ratings can help you see what features of products customers value. You may see quality of packaging or speed of delivery mentioned more often. So, it’s clear that this is what we need to play with.
How to start Ozon parsing: a rough plan of action
Now to the specifics. First you need a tool - a script or a parsing program, and a little patience. An easy way is to use Python with the BeautifulSoup or Scrapy libraries, which help extract data from pages. Here's what a typical parsing scheme looks like:
- Creating a page request. The first step is to send a request to the product page. The easiest way is to use the requests library. For example, requests.get('https://www.ozon.ru/category/elektronika/') sends a request to the electronics page. The contents of the page should be saved for further analysis. Saved? Let's move on.
- Data extraction. Next, the data is retrieved using BeautifulSoup. For example, to collect prices, you need to find tags that contain cost information. Once you learn to identify the tags you need (usually <span> or <div>), you can extract not only prices, but also product names, ratings and much more.
- Process automation. To use the data, it is important not to manually run the script every time, but to set up automation. This can be done through cron tasks on the server or using triggers in the program itself. By running the script every few hours, you can get up-to-date information without manual steps.
- Data processing. The obtained data can be loaded into tables, where it will be easier to analyze. It is best to divide the entire array of information into categories: prices, availability, ratings, so that you can then easily compare indicators and make quick decisions.
Unlike surfing the site, when scraping, the “faucet” sends tens, hundreds or thousands of requests. Of course, they look suspicious for Ozon. The site will begin to ban the IP from which they come. This is where proxies are needed.
Why are proxies important for scraping?
- Avoiding blocking. If requests come from the same IP address, this is a signal to the site that someone is too interested in its data. Proxies allow you to distribute requests across different IPs, which reduces the risk of blocking. For example, instead of sending 500 requests from one IP, you can send them through 10-20 different proxy servers. This will make the parsing invisible.
- Speed and stability. Using multiple proxies speeds up the process. By dividing the load between multiple IPs, pages can be processed in parallel, which significantly reduces the time it takes to receive data.
- Access to regional data. Some data on Ozon may be region-specific, and proxy servers allow you to simulate requests from the desired city or country. For example, if you want to analyze prices in different regions, proxies can help you query data from the desired location.
How to choose a proxy for Ozon parsing?
For Ozon parsing, it is best to use mobile or residential proxies, which look like regular user connections to the site. Here are some recommendations for choosing:
- Residential proxies. Such proxies use real IP addresses tied to specific devices or regions. They look like “live” connections to the site, so they are blocked less often.
- Mobile proxies. These are the “natural” IPs associated with smartphones. Ozon does not block such IP addresses, as they are used by real users.
Parsing proxy setting
Most parsing scripts written in Python allow you to use a proxy in conjunction with the requests library. Here's an example of how to add a proxy to a request:
proxies = {
'http': 'http://username:password@proxyserver:port',
'https': 'https://username:password@proxyserver:port',
}
response = requests.get('https://www.ozon.ru', proxies=proxies)
For large projects, it is more convenient to use ready-made solutions, for example, anti-detect browsers or specialized APIs for working with proxies.
Proxy is a fundamental tool for secure and stable Ozon scraping. Without them, the risk of blocking increases significantly, and the parser may stop at the most inopportune moment. By choosing reliable proxy services, you can not only protect your IP, but also expand your capabilities for deeper data analysis.
Ozon parsing is a tool for anyone who wants to be one step ahead of the competition. This is a way to get objective indicators and understanding of the real state of the market. Your strategy will no longer be based on guesswork or outdated data—you will have a complete picture that reflects market changes in real time.