Web crawling and web scraping are essential for collecting public data. Many online retailers use web scrapers to collect new data from various websites. They use this data to develop marketing and advertising efforts.

Those who don’t know how to explore a website without being blocked often end up blacklisted when scraping data. Ending up on a blacklist is the good last thing you want. Fortunately, following a few simple procedures will help you stay clear.

How do server administrators identify crawlers?

IP addresses, user agents, browser settings and general behavior are used to identify web crawlers and web scraping software. CAPTCHAs are issued if the site deems it suspicious, and, finally, your requests are stopped once your crawler has been spotted.

You can avoid being blocked from crawling a website by following these simple guidelines.

Check the robot exclusion procedure.

Before attempting to crawl or remove a website, verify that the target allows data collection.

Inspect the robots exclusion protocol file (robots.txt) and observe website restrictions when using robots.txt files.

Don’t do anything that could harm the site! This is especially crucial when it comes to sites that allow for exploration.

• Set a delay between requests.
• Crawl during off-peak hours.
• Limit requests from an IP address.
• Adhere to the robot exclusion protocol.

Many websites allow scraping and crawling. Nevertheless, you will still end up on a blacklist if you do not follow the specific procedures. Compliance with server administrator guidelines is essential.

Use a proxy server.

Without a proxy, crawling the web would be next to impossible. Data center and residential IP proxies can be used for different purposes depending on the job at hand.

In order to avoid IP address bans and maintain anonymity, you need to use an intermediary between your device and the target website.

For example, a German user might need to use a US proxy to access US content if they are in Germany.

• Choose a proxy service that has a large number of IP addresses from different countries.

Rotate IP addresses.

Rotating your IP addresses is essential when using a proxy pool.

The website you are trying to access will throttle your IP address if you send too many requests from the same site. Rotating your proxies helps you appear as a variety of different internet users. This reduces the risk of ending up on a blacklist.

If you are using data center proxies you will want to use a proxy rotation service as all Oxylabs residential proxies use rotating IPs. Additionally, we disable both IPv4 and IPv6 proxies at the same time. IPv4 and IPv6 differ significantly, so be sure to be up to date on acceptable use of proxies.

Use real-time user agents.

Crawlers can read HTTP request headers on the vast majority of hosting servers.

The term “user agent” refers to the header of an HTTP request that identifies the operating system and software used by the client.

Servers are able to quickly identify malicious user agents.

Real user agents contain HTTP request parameters provided by organic visitors. Your user agent must appear as an organic agent to avoid getting blacklisted.

Each web browser request contains a user agent. This is why you must regularly change your user agent.

Using the latest and most widely used user agents is also essential. For example, it raises many red flags if you make requests using a five-year-old user agent from an unsupported version of Firefox.

You will find the most popular user agents in public databases on the Internet. Contact a trusted expert if you need access to our own constantly updated database.

Justify your fingerprint.

Robot detection systems are becoming increasingly complex. Some websites use TCP or IP fingerprinting to identify them.

TCP leaves a variety of parameters when it scrapes the web. The end user’s device or operating system determines these values.

Keep your settings constant as you crawl and scrape. This will help you avoid the dreaded blacklist.