How to get web page data with Google Sheets

Web scraping or extracting data is not an easy task. But what many people do not know is that it is not necessary to be a hacker to collect data from websites. In fact, you don't need any programming skills.

A myriad of tools like browser extensions exist to help ease the necessary technical knowledge. But even if they are a bit "too much" for you, do not worry. Google Sheets will come to help you

Google Sheets has a handy little formula that allows you to extract lists or data sheets of web pages into your chosen worksheet. That formula is called importhtml and works like this:

Find the site you want to retrieve data

For example, consider the list of top technology companies in terms of revenue on Wikipedia:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_technology_companies_by_revenue 

Specify the table or list you want to extract data from

In this case, select the second table on the page, in the '2019 list' section.

Now, enter the following in the arbitrary box (suppose A1)

 =IMPORTHTML('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_technology_companies_by_revenue', 'table', 2) 

As you can see, you will have to declare three things in the formula: the URL you want to get data from, the type of data (table or list) and the position (in this case, the second table, so , the number in the formula is 2 ).

Hit Enter and the table will appear in the worksheet:

The table will appear in the worksheet

To go to the next level and actually convert or delete that data, first make sure that it is put in a static state instead of linked data. To do so, select the table, right-click in cell A1 , select Paste special> Paste values ​​only .

All operations are completed. Feel free to do what you like with data in Google Sheets!

Hope you are succesful.