Seamless Web Scraping: 5 Proven Methods
The internet, coupled with technology, has improved businesses’ ability to venture into new markets and reach more customers. With it, competition has become even more intense, requiring companies to come up with new ways and strategies to stay ahead of the competition. Central to the process of developing new strategies is the use of data. Data provides insights into consumer behavior and preferences as well as prevailing market conditions. It also provides the basis against which companies can predict future trends and identify opportunities. However, in order to extract value from data, companies must first retrieve it from different sources. And this is where web scraping comes in.
What is Web Scraping?
Web scraping, also known as web data harvesting or web data extraction, is the automated method of collecting publicly available data from websites. It involves the use of bots known as web scrapers, which do the heavy lifting. The scrapers send HTTP requests to websites from which data is to be extracted. Upon receiving responses, the bots organize the data into a structured format and save it for download.
Benefits of Ethical Web Scraping
Web scraping offers the following benefits:
- Market research: it enables businesses to understand the market by identifying the number of competitors therein as well as the products and services they offer
- Price monitoring and optimization: by scraping pricing information and customer feedback, companies can identify the sweet spot as regards the right price to set
- Review and reputation monitoring: companies can use web scrapers to collect real-time data on customer reviews. This enables them to respond to queries and improve their search engine ranking on local listings.
- Search engine optimization (SEO): businesses can use web scraping to identify SEO best practices, which, when implemented on their own sites, can boost their ranking on search engine results pages.
- Lead generation: web scraping can be used to ethically collect publicly available contact information to be used in marketing campaigns.
- Investment decisions: through web data harvesting, companies can extract data that, when analyzed, provides insights into opportunities that can be exploited.
Challenges Affecting Web Scraping
Web scraping is impacted by various constraints that may limit the chances of success. These include:
- IP blocking
- CAPTCHA puzzles
- Geo-restriction
- Honeypot traps
- Login and sign-in/sign-up pages
- User agents and headers
Causes of IP Blocking
Of these constraints, IP blocking is the main challenge. It is triggered by many reasons. Below is a list of 5 causes of IP blocking.
1.Too many requests
A server monitors the number of requests sent from the same IP address. If too many requests are sent within a short period, the server associates this behavior with a bot. This is because humans can only send a limited number of requests in a minute or hour.
2. Using datacenter IP addresses
Datacenter IP addresses are easily detected. If used in web scraping, they increase the chances of IP blocking.
3. Disregard for the robots exclusion protocol (REP)
Contained in the robots.txt file, the REP details the webpages that should not be crawled or scraped. If a scraper disregards the contents of this file and proceeds with data extraction, the associated IP address will get blocked.
4. Multiple Failed Login Attempts
Login pages are a way of deterring bots. Thus, if a server detects multiple failed login attempts, it takes this as having been triggered by bots and thus blocks the IP address.
5. Malware-Related Activity
Servers continually monitor activity even after they have been accessed. If they detect any malware-related activity, they automatically block the IP address.
5 Tips on How to Prevent IP Blocking
Here are 5 pointers on how you can avoid IP blocking:
1.Use a Scraper API
A scraper API is equipped with proxy rotating capabilities that constantly change the assigned IP address. The rotator limits the number of requests originating from the same IP address. If you’re looking for a concrete way on how to crawl a website without getting blocked, you can try Oxylabs’ Web Scraper API for free.
2. Choose a scraper provider with an extensive IP network pool
A wide IP network pool enables you to frequently change the IP address, ensuring that the same IP address is only responsible for a few requests. A scraper API offers this capability.
3. Use residential proxies
Residential proxies are more reliable than datacenter proxies in that they are not easy to detect or block.
4. Mimic human behavior
Always ensure that your web scraper sends a limited number of requests at a time. This practice helps mimic human browsing behavior, preventing blocking.
5. Use anti-malware solutions
These solutions will help prevent IP blocking that would have otherwise been caused by malware-related activities.
Conclusion
Data is instrumental to the success of businesses. But to use it, companies must first extract it. Web scraping is a great way of retrieving publicly available data from websites. And in this article, we have highlighted 5 proven ways that promote seamless web scraping.