Hundreds of millions of useful data are scattered throughout the internet. When someone wants to collect this data, they can do it in two ways. One is manual and the other is automatic. Manual web scraping requires a lot of time and effort. So, automatic data gathering, commonly known as web scraping, is more popular across the globe.
Users need specialized tools and proxy servers for web scraping. Specific types of proxy servers are also available for different tools. Take selenium proxy for example. Selenium is a popular tool for web scraping, but you need to master the techniques to get the best out of it. You can learn more about this on Proxyway
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What Is Web Scraping and How It Works?
Say you have a business that wants to launch a new product. Before launching the product, you need to collect information about the competitors’ products. However, searching for each product and downloading data manually can consume a lot of time. To get rid of this hectic task, you can use web scraping tools.
Once you enter your target URL, the tool can fetch all the necessary data and organize them in your desired format. Due to the accuracy and efficiency, web scraping has become routine work for most marketers and businesses.
What Proxies Do in Web Scraping?
Be it for watching content or scraping data, each of your connection requests contains your IP address. And your IP address is bound with two things. One is your physical location and the other is your ISP. So, the target website can detect from where you are sending that request.
In web scraping, you need to use a lot of requests to the same server from the same IP address. Websites detect this as suspicious activity and limit your requests. In many cases, they can block your IP address. So, your scraping operation won’t see the light if you can’t send as many requests as needed.
This is where proxies come into play. Proxies are also IP addresses, but they belong to others. For example, data center proxies are tied to organizations, and residential proxies are tied to individual users. When you use proxies, the proxy server masks your original IP address and assigns a new IP. The new IP represents different physical locations.
So, the web server can’t detect that you are sending too many requests. And you can continue your scraping operation in peace.
Why Proxy Is a Must for Web Scraping?
Proxy helps web scrapers in many ways. Here is a quick overview of why you should use proxies in web scraping.
- Avoiding IP Ban
Modern websites have multiple safety features in place. For example, anti-bot measures will prevent you from making too many requests. If websites detect that multiple requests are coming from the same IP address, they can band that IP address. Proxies help you overcome this situation and scrape the necessary data without getting your IP banned.
- Scraping Location-Specific Data
Many websites have location-specific content. It means you can’t access that content if you are outside of the intended region. This can be a huge hurdle in web scraping, especially for e-commerce businesses. But you can overcome that hurdle using proxies. As proxies change your physical location, websites can’t detect that you live in restricted regions. So, you can easily access all content.
- Maintaining Privacy
If you use your original IP address for web scraping, websites can collect your device’s fingerprints. They may sell this data to third parties, like marketers, who will use the data to show targeted ads. To prevent this from happening, using proxies is the best choice. As proxies hide your original IP address, websites can’t create your identity profile.
- Increasing Efficiency
High-volume scraping operations need a lot of proxies for higher efficiency. If you use a large proxy pool, rotating proxies will be easier. It increases the scraping rate, which is especially beneficial for businesses.
How Does Selenium Help in Web Scraping?
Selenium is a popular browser automation tool for JavaScript-rendered websites. To use Selenium for web scraping, you need to set up a proxy server. You can check the proxy server setup guide on Proxyway to learn how to set up different types of proxies with authentication.
Conclusion
With the growing popularity of web scraping, challenges are also increasing. One of the biggest challenges is automation detection, where web servers prevent users from sending numerous requests from the same IP address.
To avoid this situation, a proxy is a must for web scraping. As it masks the original IP address and you can rotate proxies, the door of endless possibilities opens up with proxies. You just need to choose the right type of proxy for web scraping.
