Using a Proxy to Gain Access to Location-Restricted Data

Web scrapers have started using residential proxies to mask their identity on the internet as part of their daily scraping activities. There are numerous residential proxy lists available online already which have fallen to the mercy of web scrapers. However, using these proxies have vast revenue streams for individuals and businesses alike.

Residential US proxies are among the favorites due to zero content restriction and an immense pool of IPs available to web scrapers 24×7. With a US proxy, users can automate scraping to gather vast amounts of data from the internet.

The importance of proxies in web scraping

Proxies help web scrapers in maintaining numerous concurrent sessions on the same or different websites without any limitations. Web scrapers can also send large quantities of requests to the target website without the risk of getting banned, as their IP is rotated through the IP pool of the residential proxy.

Scrapers can also bypass IP bans by using residential proxies to mask their identity as legitimate users on the website. Proxies also allow scrapers to access geo-specific content by spoofing the IP address to match the geographical location.

Proxy pool

A proxy pool is necessary for dividing the traffic over several IP addresses. There is only a single rule for a proxy pool: the bigger, the better.

Here is a list of things that web scrapers can benefit from if they have a considerably bigger pool of IPs.

• Send numerous requests every hour to the same website through different IPs.
• Rotating the primary IP address to avoid detection from websites.
• Ability to target larger websites that have countermeasures in place to stop web scraping on their website.

Managing the proxy pool

Having an extensive US proxies pool to reroute your requests is not a long-term solution; as time passes, every IP address will start getting flagged from websites, and the extraction of quality content will become limited.

Therefore, the proxy pool should be managed appropriately to save any of the IPs from getting flagged. Here are some tips:

• User-agents: User agents should be actively managed to ensure that your scraper can crawl flawlessly through the internet.
• Delays: Random delays coupled with an intelligent throttling system can help hide your scraper from the world.
• Retry errors: Proxies should be allowed to send retry requests through a different IP address if they run into an error or a ban.
• Geographical targeting: Some proxies need to be configured to lock their geographical location.
• Session control: If you want to maintain the session with the same IP address, you need to configure the pool not to rotate your IP address unless specified.
• Identifying bans: The employed proxy solution should be able to detect bans when they occur. The user can better understand why the ban happened and make corrective methods to ensure that none of the other IPs in the pool are banned.

Successful scraping tips

Here are some successful tips which web scrapers should keep in mind to get the best results.

1. Web scrapers should not overload every website with requests that reduce the website’s overall performance, making it difficult for actual users who want to use the site. Typically, website owners insert a robot.txt file in their site that defines pages that can be scraped and the allowed speed for the scraper that does not reduce the website’s performance.
2. Adjust the speed of your scraper to simulate a human to avoid detection by the defensive measures deployed on the site. Therefore, adding random delays, house movements, and delays will help the bot maintain its integrity.
3. Websites that have activated anti-scraping measures can immediately block you. When the scraper is blocked, the site will show a 403 error code. Sometimes, the website will continue to send some data, but it might be inaccurate. Therefore, it’s essential to know when you’ve been blocked and have started facing unusual responses from the website.
4. Websites generally read user agents to distinguish between a legitimate user and a bot. Therefore, make sure to write some different user agents and make regular rotations to your user agents so that the website cannot label your web scraper as a bot.
5. To enjoy the full benefit of your web scrapers, employ the use of a headless browser. Numerous websites opt for designing their websites in Java instead of HTML, making it difficult for the scraper to extract information directly. The headless browser will process javascript and render all content into HTML. Posing as a human user is very easy with the help of a headless browser as the scraper interacts just as it would on a regular browser.
6. Proxies are essential; therefore, ensure that all of your proxies are adequately configured before you launch the scraper. There can be a chance that the scraper starts sending requests from your primary IP address. The target website will immediately detect and block it.
7. Web crawlers can be integrated with your web scraping APIs to provide relevant URLs from where the scraper can easily extract data. This will reduce research time by giving the web crawler the particular variables and getting URLs to scrape.

Conclusion

We have entered into exciting times, where data has turned into gold. Scraping has become an integral part of our lives. Numerous scrapers and data buyers have created an entire market around data. Therefore, it is foolish to miss out on this market; more people should join to earn big by scraping unique data and selling it to interested buyers.