In 2024, web data shifted from traditional uses to driving AI innovation. It’s role in training advanced models reshaped industries and enabled smarter solutions.
Back in 2012, web scraping was simple and nearly free.
Websites used plain HTML, and building a basic crawler took minutes. There were no CAPTCHAs, no IP blocks—just raw access to data. We weren’t alone in seeing the potential.
Google indexed the web with scraping, and even Mark Zuckerberg famously used it to collect student profiles from Harvard’s directory to launch Facebook.
In those days, it felt like Silicon Valley lived by an unspoken motto: move fast and scrape things.
Fast forward to today, and that motto has a new twist.
Initially, we provided data to help retail brands monitor their online portfolios and power dashboards. Today, in 2024, we see a new frontier emerging: a growing number of our customers are using web data to train AI models.
Consider this: ChatGPT, as widely acknowledged, derives its training data from publicly available information on the web.
This shift signals a transformation in how web data is used. It’s no longer just about insights or competitive monitoring—it’s about collecting the intelligence that drives modern AI.
But with this opportunity come challenges.
How do we ensure the data is clean, reliable, and ethically sourced? As demand for training datasets grows, answering these questions will define the next chapter of innovation.
2024 Key Highlights
Pressed for time? Here’s a quick recap of the major highlights from Grepsr in 2024.
- Product Market Fit for Pline: Pline hit a major milestone in 2024— Almost 2 million data points collected. This no-code solution empowers users worldwide to automate workflows and extract insights effortlessly. Pline is redefining how web data drives decisions.
- Upholding Customer Trust: Our Net Promoter Score stayed strong at 53 in 2024, far above the SaaS industry average of 36. Customer feedback pushed us to innovate, leading to stronger connections and improved experiences.
- Revamping The Data Platform: In December 2024, we launched a revamped data platform. It now oversees the entire data lifecycle—from crawler execution to delivery. This update empowers users to streamline projects, explore new flexibility, and engage hands-on. With a product-driven approach, we’re making interaction seamless and maximizing the platform’s capabilities.
- Riding the AI Wave: 2024 marked an unprecedented surge in data demand across sectors, driven by AI’s rapid rise. From e-commerce to research, data needs for training advanced AI models soared. Traditional applications remain strong, but a shift is underway. The winds of change are here, and this trend is only gaining momentum.
Product Market Fit for Pline
Businesses face increasing challenges in collecting accurate and reliable data, especially when traditional data extraction tools prioritize one feature over another.
Pline bridges this gap with its dual approach: Browse & Capture (B&C) mode and automated workflows to deliver a strong product-market fit.
B&C mode lets users extract data directly while browsing, overcoming challenges like CAPTCHAs and IP blocks, with multi-tab extraction for efficiency. Simultaneously, automated workflows streamline large-scale data collection, offering speed and scalability.
By combining B&C and automation workflows, Pline offers a versatile solution that adapts to various data collection needs, making it easier for businesses to gather accurate and timely information.
We’re proud to share that what began as a simple data extraction extension has evolved into the world’s first collaborative data extraction tool!
With a community of over 1,100 active users spanning 10+ countries impacting different industries, including e-commerce, real estate, and recruitment, our reach continues to grow.
Looking ahead, we’re working on exciting features like AI-assisted data workflows and scheduling. If you haven’t tried Pline yet, now’s the perfect time—your first 500 data records are free to collect.
Give Pline a spin and experience the future of web scraping.
Upholding Customer Trust in Web Data
Last year, we encouraged our customers to push the boundaries:
“Challenge us so we can grow together.”
And challenge us they did.
We saw a significant increase in requests from diverse industries like e-commerce, real estate, healthcare, software, and finance.
Many of these centered around the need for high-quality training datasets, powering applications from general-purpose AI to cutting-edge scientific research.
This evolution has been a rewarding experience for us, showcasing the expanding role of data in driving innovation.
Gaming, too, has shown incredible momentum, with its market evolving in exciting new directions. Looking ahead, the opportunities seem boundless.
At Grepsr, we’re more than just a data extraction platform—we’re a partner in helping you focus on what matters most. Whether it’s enabling deep analysis or training advanced ML models, we take care of the heavy lifting so you can innovate.
Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 53—well above the SaaS industry average of 36—is a sign of our commitment to quality and resilience in meeting customer needs. But, we want and plan to do better.
Even as we’ve navigated complex and ambitious requests, we’ve remained focused on delivering exceptional results.
As we enter 2025, we’re ready for what’s next.
So, keep innovating—and we’ll be here to rise to the challenge.
Revamping the Web Data Platform
Pline’s launch is not the only exciting thing that happened in 2024 at Grepsr.
In December, we took it upon ourselves to launch the new version of our data platform. This update was meant for users to take full control of their data lifecycle, from crawler execution and data collection to seamless delivery.
This time, we are focusing on showcasing the platform’s flexibility which shines through its ability to let users take control—customizing parameters, scheduling crawler runs, and managing data delivery according to their unique requirements.
To reinforce this shift, we redesigned the platform interface for easier navigation and added advanced features with detailed Tutorials and Help Center resources to fall back on. The features in brief are:
Data Insights at a Glance – The Data Profile Dashboard lets users monitor data quality directly from the Preview page.
Streamlined Automation – Scheduled Data Extraction allows users to set custom schedules for automated data updates and delivery at selected destinations.
Team Collaboration – The Collaboration Tab makes sure the internal team and stakeholders are aligned and informed with the project requirement updates, or changes in real-time.
Enhanced Reporting – The Generate Reports feature helps users track crawler performance and access detailed system-level insights.
Altogether, these updates allow faster deployment ensuring that you receive high-quality datasets seamlessly, which in return helps you build better and more robust AI/ML models for impactful results.
Riding the AI Wave
As we mentioned at the outset of this article, web scraping has often been the lynchpin behind some of the most groundbreaking innovations of our time.
Two decades ago, it was Google and Facebook leading the way; today, it’s ChatGPT and Gemini revolutionizing the digital world.
The year 2023 was a pivotal one in Grepsr’s history—an inflection point that brought challenges and opportunities alike.
It was the year the digital boom of the COVID-19 era finally subsided, exposing underlying uncertainties. Amid speculation of an impending recession, we braced ourselves for potential impacts.
Then came ChatGPT, reshaping the technological landscape and proving to be a catalyst for innovation. And, as it turned out, the widely feared recession never fully materialized, giving industries the room to grow and adapt.
In 2020, few would have believed that Artificial Intelligence could become as advanced as it is today.
Back then, AI was often dismissed as “dumb.” Now, with the likes of GPT-4, we see models with a contextual understanding akin to a high school graduate.
Yet the future of AI holds even more promise. Achieving the next level of intelligence will require more energy, more sophisticated parameters, and, as always, a touch of serendipity.
Encouragingly, the pieces are falling into place: investors are pouring resources into nuclear energy, while data providers like us are hard at work delivering high-quality training datasets.
And serendipity? That unpredictable magic will emerge as data, algorithms, and human creativity continue to interact in unforeseen ways.
This year, we’ve witnessed hints of transformation. The coming years promise to be an exciting era—not just for what humans will create, but for what machines will create in turn.
Web scraping remains the foundation in this ecosystem, underpinning the data that powers AI and driving the innovations that shape our future.
Has the Future Arrived?
In the podcast Age of Miracles, Isaiah Taylor, the founder of Valar Atomics—a nuclear power company—argued that everything around us, in terms of consumable goods, rests on three fundamental pillars: energy, intelligence, and dexterity.
He believes we are on the verge of mastering all three.
Investors are pouring massive resources into nuclear energy, paving the way for energy to become incredibly cheap and abundant.
Taylor also explains that while dexterity—the ability to manipulate and create—has always existed, it has been held back by the limits of intelligence. Now, with the rise of artificial intelligence, those constraints are being removed.
Think about the implications of this.
In the not-too-distant future, it might be possible to conjure physical objects by merely voicing your ideas—a capability reminiscent of the “god-like” powers described in ancient religious and mythological texts.
However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. At Grepsr, we maintain an optimistic yet grounded perspective. We are committed to advancing progress in meaningful ways.
Our mission in this exciting future remains clear: to drive innovation forward through the power of web data—just as we always have.
