If you’re interested in the world of technology and the latest internet developments, you’re probably familiar with web scraping. Although it’s one of the newer processes companies, organizations, and individual internet users use today, web scraping has quickly gained worldwide popularity due to its countless benefits.
However, web scraping also comes with its challenges. Most people struggle with numerous blocks website owners introduce to prevent scrapers from accessing their content. Fortunately, you can avoid these blocks by implementing three expert tips, so check them out below.
What is web scraping?
Web scraping is the process of extracting data from websites using computer code. People also refer to it as web harvesting, data extraction, or web crawling.
The process involves using bots, programs, or scripts to collect data from various websites and other online sources. Then, your scraping tool stores the collected data in a structured format for further processing, usually as a database or spreadsheet.
You can use web scraping to extract data such as product information, pricing, contact information, and content from web pages. The collected data has countless use cases, including market research and gathering information for competitive analysis.
Web scraping involves writing programs or scripts to extract data from online sources. Those programs or scripts can be in any programming language, but Python, Java, and C++ are the most popular choices.
Web scraping use cases
Web scraping has many applications and benefits. Let’s take a closer look at some of its most common use cases.
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Price monitoring
Retail stores and other businesses use web scraping techniques to monitor their pricing and keep tabs on the prices of their competitors. With web scraping, it’s easy to track the prices of products and services across different websites.
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Lead generation
Companies are always looking for ways to generate more leads, and web scraping equips them with the right tools. Businesses worldwide can use web scraping to generate leads by collecting contact information from multiple websites.
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Market research
Businesses use web scraping to collect data from websites in their industry, competitors, and customers to gain insights into the market. Good market research makes it significantly easier to maintain a competitive edge over rivals.
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Content aggregation
Web scraping helps organizations collect content from different websites and put it together in one place. As a result, companies can have all the crucial information and datasets in one place.
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Job postings
Companies use web scraping to collect job postings from different websites and analyze them to find the best-suited candidates. They can also create better job postings by learning what other companies are offering and asking for regarding similar positions.
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Social media monitoring
Businesses use web scraping to collect data from social media platforms to gain insights into customer sentiment and behavior. That allows them to stay connected with their customers and reach their target audience more quickly.
Top 3 expert tips for block-free scraping
Web scraping has many advantages, but blocks have been a massive obstacle to everyone who wants to collect valuable information from the internet. Now you can avoid IP blocks by implementing these three expert tips.
1. Use proxy servers
Proxy servers provide increased security, anonymity, and access control on the internet. They act as intermediaries between client applications and web servers. You can use them to filter requests, improve performance, and hide your identity. However, you can also bypass scraping blocks with a US proxy server.
Considering scraping blocks operate by analyzing users’ IP addresses, a US proxy that hides your IP address and real-life location is an easy and effective way to continue acquiring public data without interruptions.
2. Rotate IP addresses
Another helpful tip is to rotate your IP addresses when scraping. The target domain will likely detect and ban your IP if you send too many HTTP requests from the same IP address. That will prevent you from accessing the site permanently or temporarily, which means one less source for data collection.
By rotating your IP addresses, it will look like different users are visiting the site, reducing your chances of getting a block and ensuring a more successful scraping experience.
3. Develop a believable fingerprint
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) leaves different parameters during the scraping process. The user’s device or operating system determines them. Mechanisms and tools for catching scrapers are becoming more sophisticated, so now website owners can detect bots by analyzing the fingerprint of every visitor.
To prevent detection and blocking, ensure your parameters are consistent. That way, you’ll develop a believable fingerprint and easily bypass blocks.
Bottom line
Web scraping allows internet users to access extensive amounts of structured data in seconds. While that comes with many advantages, web scrapers also face some difficulties. Using a US proxy is the simplest and easiest way to avoid the increasingly popular scraper blocks and continue scraping the web however you wish.
