Gone are the days when data collection from different sources was a hefty job. Thanks to the web scraping tools out there, extraction can now be possible within a glance. But things would not be that easy without residential proxies.
Because the chances of getting blocked while extracting data have always been high.
Residential proxies ensure users can have unlimited access to data extraction without even bothering to get blocked or solve CAPTChA. When you use residential proxies, your visits to certain websites will be more like visits from a legitimate user. There is hardly any chance of getting blocked.
But if you are first exploring residential proxies for web scraping, you must have a clear idea of the topic. Only then it will be able to make the most of residential proxies for your business.
What Does It Mean by Residential Proxies for Web Scraping?
Let’s start from the basics. Do you know what web scraping really is? Web scraping is all about using advanced tools or API to extract data from websites, unlike the manual approach, which takes more time and effort. For example, a TikTok scraper. You can use it to extract essential data from the world’s most trending social media platform.
But here is a catch!
When you approach extracting data with the help of web scraping tools, the website may block your access. What happens here is the website may treat the IP address that you use to visit the website as a bot. And truly! That’s because you are using a scrapper.
Residential proxies bring a modern solution to this problem.
You can go with web scraping comprehensively, going with the residential proxies. Residential proxies are the IP addresses of residential internet users provided by the Internet Service Provider (ISPs). The proxy service routes your IP address, and as a user, you are assigned a residential IP address (or many) instead of your actual one.
So when you visit any website from a residential IP address, there is less chance of getting blocked. Your visit will moreover appear as a regular traffic. Thus, the websites find it hard to detect your web scraping activities.
Why Should You Use Residential Proxies for Web Scraping?
Using residential proxies when it comes to web scraping is nothing new. Without residential proxies, you can not think of web scraping as being that efficient. If you have come through the earlier sections, you should have known the impact of residential proxies for ultimate web scraping.
[ Image courtesy: Pexels ]
But have you ever wondered how technology makes web scraping that smooth? Here’s an in-brief breakdown of why you should go with a proxy provider to level up your web scraping task;
High Success Rate
As you know, there is always a high chance of getting blocked in web scraping, especially when you don’t use any residential proxy. So, in order to make web scraping seem less, residential proxies should be used. It is very much possible to attain even up to a 99% success rate.
Most reliable residential proxy providers offer rotational IP addresses. Now, what does it mean?
Well, when you have a residential IP address, even if your assigned IP address gets blocked, you are automatically directed to another IP address for endless scrapping. So, ensure your proxy provider offers the feature when purchasing residential proxies.
Also, residential proxies will help deny CAPTCHA solving as your visits will more likely appear as real traffic.
Ultimate Anonymity
The thing is, you won’t be able to perform the task of web scraping with your IP address. If you attempt to do so, you will be detected as a bot and blocked.
Let’s say you want to derive data from a particular website, but the website authority restricts your location to visit the website. So, if you can’t even visit the website, how can you think of scraping data out of it?
But with residential proxies, geo-restrictions won’t bother you. You will be assigned some residential IP addresses. As your visit to a particular website is routed through the proxy service, your visit will appear as a legitimate residential user. And in this way, you can comprehensively deny the fact of geo-restrictions.
Improved Scalability
You need to pay for web scraping tools, don’t you? But what if you don’t get the expected outcome? At the end of the day, it becomes essential to scale or find out your return on investment.
So, how do you improve the scalability of your web scraping task?
Remember what I previously mentioned? Residential proxies can have the highest success rate. Now, what does this mean?
Well, this means you incorporate residential proxies with web scraping, and the scalability of the task will be highly increased. You need to encounter any hassle rather than find an active solution to web scraping.
How to Use Residential Proxies for Web Scraping?
First, going with residential proxies is not a hard job. You just need some basic ideas to combine residential proxies with web scraping and achieve the results you have always wanted.
Let’s say you have the best web scraper tool in your collection. Next, you need to go through the following;
- Choose the Best Proxy Provider
This is the best thing you can do. You can’t deny the importance of choosing the right proxy provider to make the most of web scraping. Fortunately, there are some of the best residential proxies to choose from. While choosing a proxy provider, prioritize the reputation; reliability features the provider offers, and more.
Here, you can glimpse some of the best cheap residential proxies with unlimited bandwidth.
- Webshare.
- Proxy-Cheap.
- InstantProxies.
- Shifter.
- Storm Proxies.
- Integrate Proxies Into Your Web Scraping Script
Let’s say you are done choosing a reliable residential proxy provider, purchasing a plan, and managing your credentials or information needed to access the proxy. The next crucial step is to integrate proxies into your web scraping script.
But no worries!
You should not be an expert in programming or coding to get the job done. Your proxy provider, based on their environment, will guide you through the process. In most cases, you need to set up your web scraping environment by installing essential libraries like requests for fetching web pages and BeautifulSoup for parsing HTML content.
Here’s an example of Python with proxy request:
def scrape_with_proxy(url, proxy):
headers = {
'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/119.0.0.0 Safari/537.36'
}
proxies = {
'http':
proxy,
'https': proxy
}
response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, proxies=proxies)
# Process the response content
return response.text
# Example usage:
proxy_list = ['http://192.168.1.100:8080', 'http://192.168.1.101:8080']
for proxy in proxy_list:
html_content = scrape_with_proxy('https://www.example.com', proxy)
# Process the extracted data
Theoretically, you need to perform two very important steps in this case: first, setting up a web scraping environment by installing required libraries and integrating your web scraper with residential proxies.
Related Post: How To Use SSH In Linux To Setup A Proxy Server
- Enable IP Rotation Feature
If your proxy provider offers unlimited IP rotation (they should), then you can configure or enable it by following the accurate guides. As you know, IP rotation will help you deny IP blocking and ensure a smooth web scraping experience. Moreover, there will be less chance of being flagged as a bot.
- Monitor Your Web Scraping With Residential Proxies
You need to monitor your web scraping performance using residential proxies closely. You may need to adjust the strategy, such as changing the geolocation, to attain the expected results. Most of the time, you need to change the geographical location once you get blocked from a certain residential IP address.
Final Words
A combination of a good web scraping tool and a residential proxy will always help you make the most of data extraction from different sources. So, if you think it’s time to boost your web scraping, incorporating it with residential proxies is the best thing you can do.
If you are confused about which proxy provider to choose, remember I suggested some reliable proxies in this blog. Choosing any one from the list can be a smart move, as I have had positive experiences using them.