Automations is a powerful system included in Business and Enterprise plans that unlocks advanced data extraction capabilities — beyond the classic =IMPORTFROMWEB() formula.
With Automations, you can schedule, automate, and scale your web scraping directly from Google Sheets — no code, no hassle.
🚀 What Is Automations?
Automations is a built-in interface in ImportFromWeb that lets you run web scraping tasks without formulas. It’s designed to handle large volumes of pages, automate recurring extractions (hourly, daily, etc.), and store all data for historical tracking.
📌 Note: Automations is only available with our Business and Enterprise plans.
🔓 How to Access It
- In your Google Sheet, go to the top menu bar
- Click: Extensions → ImportFromWeb → ImportFromWeb Automations
- The Automations window will open inside your spreadsheet
From there, you can create scraping tasks, schedule them, and start leveraging the full power of large-scale, automated web scraping.
💡 Why Use the Automations?
Compared to the formula-based version, the Automations offers:
- Stable Data: Extracted values remain fixed – no more formulas constantly reloading (“Loading…”)
- Faster Scraping: Google Sheets can only process ~20 formulas at a time, whereas Automations runs on our backend, making extraction much faster
- Scalability: Handle thousands of pages in one go, without slowing down your sheet
- Fully automated: Automate data refreshes with hourly, daily, or custom frequencies
- Historical Data Storage: Every extracted value is stored in Google Big Query, allowing you to build historical views and trend analysis
- Email Reports: Send the latest scraped data to your team — on autopilot
- Smart Alerts: Get notified on task completion or when data changes