The ease or complexity of scraping online data varies from one website to another. While it may be simpler to scrape data from some repositories, others are harder to access.
Many websites have strict anti-scraping measures in place, especially anti-bot systems that keep web scrapers at bay. In fact, Meta has an External Data Misuse team of over 100 people that includes engineers, analysts, data scientists, and other experts working together to deter scraping.
So how do you bypass these restrictions to scrape data from any website? You’ll need reliable solutions like web unblocked and proxies. Let’s learn more about them.
Table of Contents
Why Is It Hard to Scrape Public Data
The main thing keeping you from scraping public data is the target websites’ anti-scraping measures. These could include:
- Rate Limits: It’s a cap on the number of times a visitor can interact with a website in a given time.
- Data Limits: The website may have a limit on the amount of data the visitor can get from it.
Many websites containing public data also use JavaScript-rendered pages since they allow browser fingerprinting. Javascript accesses a multitude of environment details, from color footprint to resolution and display capabilities.
Using this information, the target website’s server can detect web scrapers, eventually blocking them. Similarly, these websites also have anti-bot systems that prevent the entry of automated software programs into the website.
Factors to Consider for Block-Free Scraping
The last thing you want to happen in your scraping efforts is for your web scraper to get blocked by the target website. It’s a waste of time, money, and resources.
So, you must consider the following factors to ensure block-free scraping:
- Paid Web Scrapers: First things first, you want to steer clear of free web scrapers. These are a massive no-no since they’re mostly a shared resource and get you blocked pretty quickly. They also lack the sophisticated features paid scrapers come with.
- Robots.txt: The robots.txt file is sort of like a terms and condition guide for the website. It tells you which pages you can scrape and which to stay away from, or if you can scrape the website at all.
- IP Rotation: If you use the same IP address to send a couple of thousand access requests, your IP is bound to get flagged. After all, that’s not ”human” behavior. An IP rotating service or proxy can be helpful in this case.
- Pattern Differentiation: Most anti-bot systems notice scraping patterns. For instance, how often is the scraper sending the request? Are requests coming at the same intervals? The key to fooling such a system is to change your scraping pattern.
Solutions to Bypass IP Blocks
Let’s say your initial scraping efforts didn’t go as planned. Or your scraper got stuck upon encountering a CAPTCHA on the target website. What now? Here are two options.
Proxies
A proxy is an intermediary between your server and that of the target website. It allows you to access data online without exposing your IP address. Instead, the target website sees the request coming from the proxy’s IP.
There are several types of proxies, ranging from mobile and datacenter to residential. When choosing proxies for web scraping, opt for residential ones. They’re more secure than all others and let your scraper appear more human since the IP addresses are linked to physical addresses.
Web Unblocker
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have found their way into web scraping too. Web Unblocker is an AI-based proxy solution with a higher success rate than regular proxies and resource-saving capabilities.
Its benefits include:
- Human-Like Browsing: You don’t have to work extra hard to fool anti-bot systems anymore. Web Unblocker does it inherently.
- CAPTCHA Resolution: Traditional scrapers are often unable to solve CAPTCHAs, rendering them useless for scraping websites with this hurdle. But Web Unblocker won’t have any trouble solving CAPTCHAs.
- Dynamic Browser Fingerprinting: You can select the right browser attributes, cookies, proxies, and headers to appear like an organic search to the website’s anti-bot system.
- Auto-Retry: Web Unblocker is an intelligent web scraping solution, which means it can resend requests with different combinations if the initial attempt fails. That saves scraping teams a lot of time since they don’t have to program the scraper manually after every failed attempt.
As evident from its futuristic features, Web Unblocker can bypass advanced anti-bot systems, allowing your web scraping efforts to move forward obstacle-free.
Conclusion
Web scraping is a necessary business process in many industries, including retail, e-commerce, health, and finance. But it can be hard to execute due to complex anti-bot systems.
Fortunately, there are a few ways to bypass these restrictions. Web Unblocker and residential proxies are two of the best approaches. While the latter requires a certain degree of personnel intervention, the former is AI-based and has a response recognition and proxy management system powered by machine learning for the best results.
