Web scraping is a process of automatically extracting information from the internet. Because the web is full of valuable data that keeps changing over time, modern companies and business-minded individuals are obsessed with algorithmic automation and the benefits it brings.
That being said, despite the rapid growth in popularity, data scrapers encounter many challenges while searching for the most valuable information. For example, when targeting Google, Bing, and other search engines, the weaknesses of web scraping start to emerge. Many red flags allow recipient servers to identify botted connections: rapid connection requests, different user ages, lack of clicks and impressions, plus many other factors.
Also, the number of websites that dislike data scraping bots only keeps growing. Social media platforms are popular targets for information extraction due to their massive user bases and constant engagement between individuals and interactive elements on the site. Even retailer websites like Amazon are extremely popular targets, either for competitors or potential clients that are looking for cheaper goods and services.
To avoid IP bans on these websites, data scientists run web scraping connections through a proxy – an intermediary server that assigns a different identity to your web traffic. With their help, data scrapers disguise themselves as real internet users. Even better, a good provider can hook you up with the most secure servers with millions of IPS – residential proxies.
In this article, we will discuss the efficiency, growth and scalability of data scraping processes. Here you will learn how the best companies expand their data collection efforts while maintaining a low profile with the help of proxies. For example, you can use a specialized Instagram scraper without prior knowledge and collect a lot of data with the help of a proxy server. Smartproxy is one of the best proxy server providers that offer an Instagram scraper alongside other internet privacy tools. Check them out to learn how they begin and scale scraping efforts.
How to keep your bots efficient
During your search for valuable data on the web, you will notice the defensiveness of sites in 2023. Some owners impose protections that forbid any traffic that resembles rapid communication through scripted behavior.
Purposefully slowing down your scraping efforts will help you collect data from one source for longer periods. If your goals depend on tracking changes in the extracted information, longevity will always ensure the most effective results.
Still, there are far better ways to keep your bots working hard without posing danger to your network identity. By rerouting the connection through a residential proxy you can collect the information from the website without receiving an IP ban. However, if a proxy address stops working, the best providers have millions of identities in their arsenal that keep the wheels turning. Once your bot gets banned, assign a new identity and continue working.
With the help of modern proxy providers, you can push your bots to new heights with protection from a proxy rotation tool. This customization ensures that the bot is automatically changing the active proxy server before it attracts attention for suspicious behavior.
Scaling up data scraping tasks
If a specific task or an entire business model requires constant extraction of fresh data from the web, look no further. Here we will explain how proxy servers allow us to achieve scalability in a very primitive way. What is faster than a scraping bot? Well, two scraping bots!
If you rent residential proxy servers from industry giants, all plans will grant you access to a massive, multi-million network of IP addresses. Unlike datacenter proxy servers, residential IPs have a niche strength that makes them far more secretive than their faster counterparts. Residential proxies come from real devices that have been serviced by legitimate internet service providers (ISP).
Once you have a massive fleet of addresses that stretch all across the world, anything is possible. First, the main topic of our discussion – scalability. Not only do you have the freedom to protect tens or even hundreds of bots with as many IP addresses, your connection is no longer constrained by IP bans, geo-blocking, and other attempts at internet censorship.
For example, some retailer websites choose to restrict access to the site only to visitors from specific countries. If this source is full of valuable information that is important to your cause, you can always bypass IP blocking with a residential proxy from that country.
In the end, we end up with a data scraping department on steroids. These scalability efforts are slowly becoming the new norm instead of a massive advantage, mostly because of price and information sensitivity from most relevant websites. Fast data scraping procedures and incoming knowledge from multiple bots ensure that you have the most relevant data for analysis and future decision-making.
Summary
Residential proxy servers are the best helpers for scaling data scraping efforts. With tons of addresses across all countries, your bots stay protected with well-crafted fake digital identities. Thanks to that, you can continue collecting information without risking an IP ban.