Best Web Scraping Tools to Avoid Getting Blocked
Gathering data is vital to the success of any business. Not only does it guide the decision-making process, but it is invaluable for creating good business strategies. Web scraping gives you the platform to collect data quickly and efficiently without draining your resources. And as an automated function, it eliminates the need for countless hours of manual labor. Let’s look at the tools needed for successful web scraping.
Use a proxy server
A good proxy server enhances your online security. It safeguards your identity by hiding your IP address, making it significantly harder for cyberthieves to find you. And without access to your IP address, sites can’t blacklist you. A good proxy server also provides automatic IP rotation to further reduce the risk of blocks.
Rotate user agents
User agent strings provide websites with various information about how you are visiting them, such as your application and operating software. Given the volume of requests, switching user agent strings is important to prevent servers from detecting and blocking you. Be sure to customize your user agents as well, since servers can easily detect suspicious ones. You can check millions of user agents at WhatIsMyBrowser.com.
Utilize CAPTCHA solvers
CAPTCHAs are one of the most common measures websites use to slow down and counter scraping. Not only are they frustrating for humans but they bring your web scraping to a halt. To address this problem, make use of CAPTCHA solving services. They automatically resolve CAPTCHAs, allowing your web crawlers to work smoothly.
Get a headless browser
The capability to translate HTML to JavaScript objects and lay out a webpage helps websites to quickly determine the source of a request. If a website detects an inability to render JavaScript, it will set off an alarm. The solution is to use a headless browser which works like any other browser but without a graphical user interface. Some popular tools used include Selenium and Puppeteer.
Modify your behavior
Human behavior and bot behavior are vastly different. With humans, there are random clicks, varying mouse movements and uncertain waiting times. Bots, however, are methodical and follow a strict pattern, making bot detection a lot easier for websites. To reduce the risk of detection, alternate scraping patterns by implementing techniques such as slowing down requests and adding random intervals between requests.
Imitating people
Web scraping is a way for businesses to easily collect large amounts of data to improve their business strategies. The key to successful scraping is to imitate human behavior, which helps you avoid blocks. By using a good proxy server and alternating your scraping patterns, gathering information with web scraping can give you a definite competitive edge.
