Ways to Bypass Web Scraping Protection

In an era of intense competition, businesses use every possible method to get ahead. For companies, a unique tool for achieving success in this game is data scraping. But even here, there are obstacles. Websites use various anti-scraping tools and methods to prevent crawlers from scraping their sites. But there is always a way around it.

What is Data Scraping

Data scraping is nothing more than collecting data from various websites. You can extract information such as product prices and discounts. The data obtained can help improve user experience. Such usage, in turn, ensures that customers prefer you over your competitors.

For example, your e-commerce company sells software development. You need to understand how you can improve your product. To do this, you need to visit sites selling software and learn about their products. Once you do that, you can also check competitors' costs.

Ultimately, you can decide at what price to list your software and which features need updating. This process applies to virtually any product.

What Are Anti-Scraping Tools and How to Deal with Them

As a growing business, you will need to target popular and well-established websites. But in such cases, the task of data scraping becomes more difficult. This is because such sites use various anti-scraping methods to block your path.

What Do These Anti-Scraping Tools Do

Anti-scraping tools identify non-genuine visitors and prevent them from obtaining data for their own use. These anti-scraping methods can be simple, such as IP address detection, or complex, such as JavaScript verification. Let's look at a few ways to bypass even the strictest of these anti-scraping tools.

#1: Constantly change your IP address

This is the simplest way to fool any anti-scraping tool. An IP address is a numeric identifier assigned to a device. It can be easily tracked when you visit a website to perform scraping. Most websites track the IP addresses visitors use for browsing. Therefore, when performing a huge task of scraping a large site, you should have multiple IP addresses handy.

This can be compared to using a separate face mask every time you leave the house. When using multiple such masks, none of your IP addresses will be blocked. This method works for most sites. But some high-level sites use advanced proxy blacklists.

In that case, you need to be smarter. Safe alternatives here are residential or mobile proxies. Just in case you're wondering, there are several types of proxies. There is a fixed number of IP addresses in the world. However, if you somehow manage to acquire 100 of them, you can easily visit 100 websites without raising any suspicion. Therefore, the most important step is to find a suitable proxy service provider.

#2: Maintain random intervals between each request

A scraper is like a robot. Data scraping tools send requests at regular intervals. Your goal is to appear as human as possible. Since people don't like routine, it's better to send requests at random intervals. This way, you can easily evade any anti-scraping tool on the target site. Make sure your requests are polite. If you send requests too frequently, you might crash the site. The goal is not to overload the site under any circumstances.

#3: Referrer always helps

The HTTP request header that indicates which site you are referred from is the referrer header. It can be your savior during any data scraping operation. Your goal is to appear as if you came directly from Google or Yandex.

Many sites use specific referrers to redirect traffic. You can use a tool like SimilarWeb to find a common referrer for the site. Typically, these are social media sites like Youtube or VK.

Knowing the referrer makes you look more credible. The target site will think that the site's usual referrer has directed you to their site. Thus, the target site will consider you a real visitor and won't think to block you.

#4: Avoid any Honeypot traps

As robots became smarter, so did website handlers. Many sites place invisible links that scraper robots will click.

By intercepting these robots, sites can easily block your data scraping operation. To protect yourself, try looking for CSS properties "display: none" or "visibility: hidden" in the link. If you find these properties in a link, it's time to back off.

Using this method, websites can detect and trap any programmed scraper. They can fingerprint your requests and then block them forever. Try to check every page for such properties.

#5: Prefer using headless browsers for anti-scraping tools

Nowadays, websites use all sorts of tricks to verify visitor authenticity. For example, they may use browser cookies, JavaScript, extensions, and fonts.

Performing data scraping on such sites can be tedious. In such cases, a headless browser can be your salvation. There are many tools to help you create browsers identical to those used by a real user.

This step will help you completely avoid detection. The only stage in this method is developing such websites, as it requires more care and time. But in the end, it's the most effective way to stay undetected when scraping a website.

#6: Monitor changes on the site

Sites may change their layout for various reasons. Most often, sites do this to block the possibility of scraping. Sites may include design elements in random places.

This method is used even by large sites. Therefore, the crawler you use must be able to understand these changes well. Your crawler should be able to detect these constant changes and continue scraping data.

Monitoring the number of successful requests per visit will help you achieve this easily. Another method to ensure continuous monitoring is to write a unit test for a specific URL on the target site. You can use one URL from each section of the site. This method will help you detect any such changes. Just a few requests sent every 24 hours will help you avoid any pauses in the scraping procedure.

#7: Use a CAPTCHA solving service for anti-scraping tools

Captchas are one of the most widely used anti-scraping tools. Most often, crawlers cannot bypass captchas on sites. But there are many web services created to bypass them. Some of these are captcha solving solutions like AntiCAPTCHA.

Sites that require CAPTCHA force crawlers to use these tools. Some of these services can be very slow and expensive. So you have to choose wisely so that this service doesn't become too costly for you.

Try Enterprise Data Scraping from ESK Solutions

ESK Solutions specializes in enterprise data scraping services. We aim to remove all obstacles in your way, including any such anti-scraping tools. To learn more about us and use our services, contact us.