Blocked for web-scrapping website
Block: IP Detection
Sometimes websites will block you based on your IP address’s location. This type of geolocation block is common on websites that adapt their available content based on customer location.
Other times the websites want to reduce the amount of traffic from non-humans, (for example, crawlers). Thus, a website may block your access based on the type of IP you are using.
Solution
Use an international proxy network with a wide selection of IPs in different countries using different IP types. This enables you to seem as if you are a real user in your desired location so that you can access the data you need.
-Block: IP Rate Limitations
This type of block may limit your access based on the number of requests sent from a single IP address at a given time. This can mean 300 requests a day or ten requests per minute, depending on the target site. When you pass the limit, you’ll get an error message or a CAPTCHA trying to find out if you are a human or a machine.
Solution
Make a slower request. The problem is that if a website gets too many requests too fast, it can crash. By slowing your crawl time and adding a delay of 10-20 seconds between clicks, you can avoid loading a target website.
Block: User-Agent Detection
There are two main ways to bypass rate limiting. First of all, you can actually limit the maximum number of requests per second. This will make the crawling process slower but can help work around rate limitations. Second, you can use a proxy which rotates IP addresses before requests reach the target site’s rate limits.
Some websites use the user-agent HTTP header to identify specific devices and block access.
Solution
Rotate your user agents to overcome this type of block.
Block: Honeypot Traps
Honeypots are a type of security measure that aims to deviate the attention of a potential attacker from crucial data sets and resources. What works for attackers can also intercept data crawlers. In this scenario, websites lure a given crawler with mask links, and when the scraper follows those links, there is no real data at the end, but the honeypot can identify the crawler and block further requests from it.
Solution
Look for specific CSS properties in the links, like “display: none” or “visibility: hidden”. This is an indication that the link doesn’t hold real data and is a trap.
Block: Scrape behind login
Sometimes the only way to access a website’s data is to log in. For example, social media pages.
Solution
Some scrapers mock human browsing behavior and let you include inputting usernames and passwords as part of the scraping process. Do note that collecting data when password or login is required is an illegal practice in many regions including the US, Canada, and Europe.
Block: JavaScript encryption
Some sites use JS encryption tech to protect data from being scraped.
Solution
Some scrapers access the data from the target website itself by having a built-in browser.
- In case you already got blocked.
Even if you’re an experienced coder, scraping a website for large amounts of data will get you blocked, eventually. This is true especially if you do it excessively or without using rotating residential proxies.
How can you get around this?
Whether you’re a novice or expert coder, you can save yourself a great deal of time and headache by using advanced unblocking tools such as the Web Unlocker. Most of it is fully automated website unlocking tool and boasts an impressive success rate for firms wanting to scrape data from the most challenging target websites without getting stopped by IP blocks.
All you need is to send one request and the data is on its way to you.
If you insist on learning how to unblock websites by yourself, that is possible but will surely require using a good rotating residential proxy network, CAPTCHA solving tools, user-agent rotation and more.