Home › Glossary › What Is Data Extraction?

What Is Data Extraction?

Data extraction is the process of retrieving specific pieces of data from a source, especially unstructured or semi-structured sources, so they can be processed, stored, or analyzed.

Sources of extraction

Data can be extracted from websites, PDFs, APIs, emails, or scanned documents. In the context of web data, extraction usually means isolating specific fields — a price, a product title, a phone number — out of a full HTML page.

Extraction methods

Common techniques include CSS selectors, XPath queries, regular expressions, and increasingly, AI-based extraction that can identify fields even when a page’s layout changes. Managed extraction services combine several of these methods so the output stays reliable as source sites update their design.