What is HTML to markdown conversion in web scraping?

TL;DR

HTML to markdown strips navigation, ads, and scripts from web pages, producing clean text that LLMs process efficiently.

What is HTML to markdown conversion?

Web pages contain menus, ads, sidebars, and scripts—noise for AI processing. Markdown conversion extracts meaningful content as clean, readable text.

Removed: Navigation, ads, popups, scripts, cookie banners

Preserved: Article content, headings, lists, tables, links

Why markdown for AI

• Token efficiency: Fewer tokens than raw HTML
• Better comprehension: LLMs understand markdown structure naturally
• Cleaner RAG: Noise-free chunks improve retrieval quality

Olostep returns LLM-ready markdown by default with automatic boilerplate removal.

Key Takeaways

Markdown conversion produces clean, structured text from messy HTML—essential for AI applications where content quality impacts results.