As web scraping is getting more and more popular in the era of digital technology, many people desire to extract data from a multiplicity of websites for the sake of their business. Because a huge data source could give them competitive advantages in the market, web scraping and proxy scraping plays an important role in the development of a business.
However, in reality, the internet is much more complicated than we might expect. It can cause many challenges that affect the performance of web scraping. Therefore, having a good grasp of these challenges is necessary to facilitate a smooth process of fetching data.
Here are some major challenges that you may encounter while scraping information.
Website Structure Changes
Websites usually update their content and improve the user interface to increase the quality of their services and boost the user experience. Therefore, structural modifications on websites are unavoidable. In this case, web scrapers that have been set up in accordance with the page’s design at a certain time before would not work for the upgraded page. Web scrapers require frequent adjustments to be compatible with recent changes of the page since a minor change from the target website can make some errors in this process.
Complicated web page structure
The meaning and structure of the web content is determined by HTML, and depending on the purpose of the web creators, web page structures can vary. If you intend to scrape various websites, you will need different scrapers for different target sites.
Getting blocked by search engines or websites
Being detected and banned by the website is commonplace because it is not difficult to detect non-human activity online with modern technologies. Usually, updating information is necessary for a business to develop. Therefore, web scrapers need to regularly visit the target websites and collect the data again and again. However, if you send out too many requests from a single IP address and the website has stringent regulations on scraping, you can get IP blocked. To solve this problem, you should use good web scraping tools since these tools usually include features to mimic the activities of real people online.
Geo-blocking
Geo-blocking is the act of completely banning or limiting access to Internet content based on the physical location of the users. The target websites may deliberately block your access when your request comes from a specific or suspicious area. Another circumstance in which geo-blocking can be a hindrance for you is when the website provides you different content based on where you are. That means you might lose some important information that could benefit you a lot.
Anti-scraping technologies
Many websites implement anti-scraping technologies that could detect and prevent any scraping attempts. There are many common anti-scraping techniques that you may encounter, including IP, Captcha, AJAX, or UA. While anti-scraping mechanisms may vary in numerous degrees, they are all employed with the aim of restricting robotic acts targeted at the website. It would take you a great deal of time and money to find a method that can work around such anti-scraping technologies.
The final words
To succeed in scraping data from websites, overcoming these challenges is a prerequisite. Having known that, WINTR is always willing to lend a helping hand by offering you efficacious solutions for all of these issues. WINTR: https://www.wintr.com/ is a powerful and versatile tool for your scraping. It is a comprehensive tool to help your web scraping become as easy as pie. You can click on the link above to find out more information about this amazing web scraping tool.
