• Troubleshooting

    Sometimes extracting data doesn't go as smoothly as expected. Fortunately most issues can be easily fixed by following the suggestions below. If you've tried these suggestions and still haven't extracted the data that you need then reach out via chat.

    Timeout errors

    This happens when an element that you have selected to extract cannot be found on the page.

    Resolution

    • Check the screenshots (click 'view screenshot' on the logs page) to view the webpage and ensure that all looks as expected

    • Ensure the data that you are scraping is not behind a login. The screenshot should make this clear. If a login is required then follow this guide to scrape data behind logins

    • Ensure that the page loaded correctly. If the screenshot is blank or looks incorrect then this should be clear. If so, contact support

    • If you are familiar with CSS selectors, copy one of the selectors that you have chosen (edit your recipe to see all of the selectors for a recipe) and search for that selector on the webpage using the Inspector. Ensure that the selector exists and if it does not then update the selector with the correct value

    • If you are scraping multiple pages and most of your pages scraped successfully with only one or two showing a timeout error then Simplescraper may have navigated beyond the last page or included a page that does not have elements. You can typically ignore the error in this scenario as long as data was returned