Top 4 Methods Used Against Web Scraping

 Even though web scraping services are widely used across most of the industries, still most of the websites do not appreciate it and they develop new anti-scraping methods on a routine basis. The main reason behind is that aggressive web scraping can eventually slow down the website for regular visitors. And in the worst case scenario, it can even result in a denial of service. So as to prevent you from scraping their websites, companies use a number of strategies. So in this blog, we are going to talk about the methods that are used against web scraping as it will prevent your IP address from getting blocked. 


 

Let’s get started!

IP rate limiting: This is also called request throttling which is one of the most common anti scraping methods. One of the good practices of web scraping is to respect the website and scrape it gradually. This will help you in avoiding the monopolising of the bandwidth of the website and regular visitors will also have a smooth experience of the website. Request throttling refers that there are more number of actions on the website and any request over this limit will not get an answer.

Blocking the bot scrapers: Some websites are fine with a simple regulation of website scraping but other websites try to prevent it all together. They use a number of tactics to identify and block the scrapers like CAPTCHAs, user agent, entire IP range, AWS shield and more.

Providing fake information: Are you familiar with honeypots? Honeypots are those links that only bots find and visit. But there are some other techniques as well that only bots see. This is known as cloaking. Cloaking is a hiding techniques that shows and altered page of the website. The bots collect information without knowing that it is fake. This method is an accepted by the search engine and the websites does use this method are at the risk from getting removed from the index.

Making the data collection even harder: Some of the websites modify their HTML mark-ups at regular intervals of time in order to protect the data. Scraping bots try to find data that it found last time. By changing the HTML mark-ups, the websites try to confuse the scraping bots and make it harder to find the required data. In this case, individuals are left confused and this is where web scraping services come into role where professionals identify the obstruction and overcomes it in an easier way. The programmers can even manipulate the code but still the desired information can't be obtained.

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