Scraping data from the web has been an ongoing trend in the past couple of years as it offers numerous advantages to individuals and companies worldwide that want to make informed business decisions or gather market data. However, that trend has recently become even more challenging to complete for various reasons.
Namely, numerous websites have implemented frustrating countermeasures, such as anti-bot systems, to prevent web scrapers from obtaining data. These defense tactics have become a dreaded punishment for those looking to gather information online, as they significantly limit and interrupt web scraping activities by banning IP addresses and triggering CAPTCHAs.
Fortunately, not all is lost, and there are still multiple methods to overcome these limitations and get around such obstacles. Keep reading as we will review and recommend a few solutions to reduce the risks of IP bans and get the data you deserve.
IP bans pose a serious issue for web scrapers
If you’ve been around the web long enough, you’ve undoubtedly heard the term “IP ban.” Gamers fear such punishments when they cheat in online games, but web scrapers get it for other reasons. Namely, once a website decides suspicious activity is coming from an IP address, it resorts to the only defense mechanism it can – an IP ban.
What can be considered suspicious activity depends mainly upon the website you’re visiting. For example, most websites will flag many HTTP requests from a single IP address, but other activities can also be flagged as worthy of getting an IP ban.
Once the IP address that a web scraper uses is banned, any following access requests to the same website will be denied, making it impossible for the scraper to continue.
What can I do about IP bans?
Fortunately for web scrapers, the numerous defense countermeasures and anti-scraping policies websites have in place can efficiently be bypassed with advanced scraping methods.
Various tools and strategies can help web scraping enthusiasts overcome these restrictions and access the data behind such walls. Some of these include:
- Proxy servers – these are some of the most efficient and widely used tools that can counter IP bans. Proxies act as an intermediary between a scraper and the internet network, hiding the original IP address and sending a request on behalf of the requestor. This way, the target website sees the IP address of the proxy server. Moreover, numerous proxies, like rotating ones, can spread the scraping load between multiple IP addresses and actively change IP addresses to prevent identification.
- Web unblocking tools – sites offering web scraping services also sometimes offer unique and potent solutions, like a Web Unblocker, to enhance the overall scraping experience. Such tools allow web scrapers access to data behind various websites’ defenses and walls. A Web Unblocker utilizes a massive network of rotating proxy servers, enables JavaScript rendering, and chooses the most suited combination of headers, cookies, and other browser parameters for specific target websites.
- Improved scraping strategy – websites often use tactics that flag consecutive requests as suspicious activities, leading to users getting banned if they send out too many requests in a short period. However, web scrapers can avoid triggering this system by implementing delays in their web scraping activities, which space out HTTP requests and mimic a real user’s behavior.
- User-agent headers – often responsible for getting web scrapers banned, user-agent headers contain information about the web browser and the operating system behind the IP address. Therefore, web scrapers can use rotating user-agent headers to create a web scraping environment where websites can’t easily recognize bot activity.
- CAPTCHA solvers – websites often use CAPTCHA tests to prevent bots from accessing the website. Although they’re efficient at stopping scraping, they can be a nuisance, so web scrapers implement machine learning and artificial intelligence systems that solve CAPTCHAs to allow web scrapers to get to the data.
These are only a few readily available techniques scrapers can use to circumvent and bypass the numerous defense countermeasures websites put up to prevent web scraping.
Conclusion
As data is invaluable to many individuals conducting research and companies looking to penetrate new markets or make data-driven decisions, web scraping has never been as prevalent as today. However, gathering data isn’t always possible as businesses with such data and their website admins often implement multiple anti-scraping measures that result in an IP address ban.
These scraping countermeasures pose a severe threat to any web scraper looking to get its hands on precious data, but there are various methods to bypass them. The methods include using rotating proxies and CAPTCHA solvers, implementing scraping delays, randomizing user-agent headers, and using sophisticated scraping tools like Web Unblocker.
