Everything You Need To Learn About Web Scraping and Proxies

Web scraping is fast gaining importance among 21^st century businesses in all parts of the world. This latest business trend is encouraging businesses to scrape content from websites using crawlers. Many industries these days are increasing their dependency on web/content scraping for growth. The list of examples includes but is not limited to sectors like insurance, healthcare, media, real-estate, travel industry, finance, research and lead generation only. 

But what exactly is web scraping from websites?

This must be the question spinning in your mind. This is something you must know about. In simple words, it is actually an automated form of data extraction from a variety of reliable web resources available on the internet.

Leverage The Potential of Web Scraping:

You can leverage the potential of this advanced and automated form of data extraction. But how can it be done? This is the key question you need an answer to. Well, let’s get to the point now:

• Opt for web scraping tools
• Web scraping development services
• Proxies for web scraping

Let’s now see how these mediums can help you leverage the potential of web scraping.

• Opt For Web Scraping Tools:

You just need to figure out your budget and business needs to be able to choose the best possible web scraping tool for your business. The internet is home to many tools to help you scrape content from websites and the list includes but is not limited to tools like Scrapy, ScrapeHero Cloud, Data Scraper (a Chrome Extension), Scraper (A Chrome Extension) and ParseHub.

• Web Scraping Development Services:

This is another way for you to leverage the full potential of web scraping. Utilizing this medium allows you to seek the following relevant services:

• Web scraping in Python
• Web Scraper App Development services
• Web Scraper tool development services
• Web Crawler Development services

This is exactly where companies providing web scraper and crawler development services prove their value.

• Proxies For Web Scraping

This is the most important web scraping concept you need to know about. Proxies are a medium to make the process of data extraction smooth and streamlined as you don’ have to Abide by and restrictions to bypass or enter a network. In simple words, proxies help you connect to the endpoint indirectly. As a result, the destination server sees the proxy instead of the real IP address of your device.

Reasons to use proxy for scraping content from websites:

Website owners generally ban IP addresses trying to generate suspicious traffic and extract data from their website. Proxies are capable of overlaying your device’s IP address with the IP address of their own.

Every time you make use proxies for data extraction, the server of your target website sees the proxy instead of the IP address of your device. 

Rotation of proxies makes sure that your target website recognizes as separate ones. As for reason, they are recognized as proxies coming from different IP addresses.

Proxies enable you to send requests from different locations to help you access content for specific users of specific location only. It is important if you are one of the eCommerce website scrapers.

Proxies are a medium you need for bypassing a general IP address-related restrictions imposed by some website owners to stop traffic from certain locations. In that case, proxies prove to be useful.

Types of Proxies:

You need a pool of proxies for data extraction. Meaning, you need different types of proxies for scraping websites. You can choose any one of them as per your business needs. Given below is the list of proxies you can use:

• Datacenter IPs
• Residfential IPs
• Mobile IPs
• Public, shared and private proxies

 Why do you need Pool of Proxies?

Having several IPs to scrape content from websites may not be enough sometimes. Therefore, you will need a huge pool of proxies. You will need pool of proxies for several reasons mentioned below:

• Each request helps you get another IP Address.
• You can buy a pool of proxies as per you need. The volume depends on the following:
• The number of requests every hour.
• Destination websites to be scraped.
• The type of proxies being used by you.
• The complexity level of your proxy management system.

Proxy Pool Management:

This is another key factor you need to know about. Effective management of pool of proxies is very important. Mismanagement of proxies can result in ban to make sure you are not able to fetch data from your targeted website. Following are the list of solutions you can use to manage your pool of proxies effectively:

• Detection of different types of restrictions. The list includes Captcha, rerouting, blocks etc.
• Control user agent for successful scraping.
• Make use of Delays to hide your scraping activity. Randomization of delays for requests and clicks is advised.
• GEOtargeting is another solution you can implement for managing your pool of proxies.
• You can even try to manage connections using a single proxy.
• If needed, rotating IPS could also be a good idea.

You can easily put these solutions to manage a pool of 5 to 10 proxies. But if you want to manage a pool of hundreds or thousands of proxies, you need high-quality solutions from companies providing web scraper development and proxy management solutions.

If you are interested, SoftProdigy is ready to help you! Just get in touch with us anytime and begin your consultation!