How to Scrape Without Getting Blocked—Helpful Workarounds

POV: 

You end the year on the first page of Amazon for a particular category. 🎉

Next, you’re looking to rank first … or ultimately win the Buy Box in 2023.

To get ahead, you start scraping competitor pricing and product sales when suddenly you're faced with an unexpected interruption mid-scrape: BLOCKED! Now what? How do I unblock myself? Will I ever be able to scrape Amazon again without being blacklisted? 

Web scraping can be tricky, particularly when the most popular sites actively try to prevent developers from scraping their data using a variety of techniques such as IP address detection, HTTP request header checking, CAPTCHAs, javascript checks, and more.

Here are 5/10 ways to get around it. Learn how to implement each one here.

👉 IP rotation

Use a number of different IP addresses to avoid one IP address from getting banned. You can use an IP rotation service like ScraperAPI, which ensures you don't send requests through the same IP. However, for sites using more advanced proxy blacklists, you may need to try using residential or mobile proxies. The different types of proxies are clearly explained here.

👉 Set a real user agent

There are some developers that don’t bother setting the User Agent—and depending on the website you're scraping, it might hurt you. Why? Some websites specifically examine User Agents and block requests from User Agents that don’t belong to a major browser.

👉 Set random intervals in between your requests

Try and avoid being obvious with your request patterns. Use randomized delays (anywhere between 2-10 seconds, for example) to build a web scraper that can avoid being blocked. 

👉 Use a headless browser

Often, difficult-to-scrape websites detect things like web fonts, extensions, browser cookies, and javascript execution to determine whether or not the request is coming from a real user. As a result, deploying your own headless browser is one of the most effective solutions.

👉 Scrape out of the Google cache

For data that does not change too often, you might be able to scrape data out of Google’s cached copy of a website. This is a good workaround for non-time-sensitive information.

Read the full list of how to scrape a website without getting blocked.

For more on using a web scraper to avoid detection, get in touch. Alternatively, sign up for FREE and try ScraperAPI yourself. Get 5,000 web scraping API credits immediately.

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Keep subscribing for the latest insights and tips. Until next time, happy scraping!

Your ScraperAPI Team! 🚀