Block bots with these common anti-scraping techniques
Common anti-scraping techniques
Blocking IP addresses: Many web hosts track the IP addresses of their visitors. If a host notices that a particular visitor is generating a lot of requests to the server (such as some scrapers or bots), it can block the IP entirely. However, scrapers can overcome these blocks by changing their IP address through a proxy or VPN.
Setting up robots.txt file: A robots.txt file allows a web host to tell scrapers, crawlers, and other bots what they can and cannot access. For example, some websites use a robots.txt file to keep themselves private by telling search engines not to index them. While most search engines respect these files, many malicious forms of web scraping do not.
Request Filtering: Every time someone visits a website, they are “requesting” an HTML page from the web server. These requests are usually visible to web servers, which can see certain identifying factors, such as IP addresses and user agents, like web browsers. While we’ve already talked about blocking IPs, web servers can also filter by user agent.
For example, if a web host notices that there are a lot of requests from the same user running a very outdated version of Mozilla Firefox, they could simply block that version, and in doing so, block the bot. These blocking capabilities are available on most managed hosting plans.
Displaying a Captcha: Have you ever had to type a strange string armenia whatsapp number data of text or click on at least six buttons before accessing a page? Then you’ve encountered a “Captcha” or completely automated public Turing test for telling computers and humans apart. Although simple, they are incredibly effective at filtering out web scrapers and other bots.
Honeypots: A honeypot is a type of trap used to attract and identify unwanted visitors. In the case of web scraping, a webmaster can include invisible links on their web page. Although human users won't notice, bots will automatically visit them as they scroll, allowing webmasters to collect (and block) their IP addresses or user agents.
Now let's turn the tables again. What can a scraper do to overcome these protections?
While some anti-scraping measures are difficult to bypass, there are a couple of methods that often work. These involve changing your scraper's identifying characteristics in some way.
An AI Image Multiple proxies can help bypass IP bans and scale web scraping efforts
Proxies can help bypass IP bans and scale web scraping efforts
Use a proxy or VPN: Since many web hosts block web scrapers based on their IP address, it is often necessary to use multiple IP addresses to ensure access. Proxies and virtual private networks (VPNs) are both ideal for this task, though they have some key differences.
