Successful web scraping, which is the process of extracting data from websites using automated programs, isn’t always guaranteed. Websites are increasingly implementing anti-bot and anti-scraping measures that prevent large-scale and, sometimes, even small-scale web scraping. But given that data is critical to companies’ operations and decision-making, they must find ways to bypass the geo-restrictions. At the same time, however, they might find it challenging to choose the right solution, mainly because of the sheer number of solutions that promise web scraping success. Even so, none of these solutions come close to the capabilities offered by the web unblocker.
What is a Web Unblocker?
A web unblocker is a unique solution that, having been trained using machine learning models, intelligently bypasses sophisticated anti-bot measures. In fact, it draws its name from the fact that by using it, you’ll never get your IP address blocked again; plus, if, in the rare case that the unblocker’s access to one or several websites is restricted, its unblocking logic can be reviewed and adjusted, enabling you to access the websites once again.
This tool isn’t a regular proxy server. (A proxy is an intermediary that routes internet traffic through itself, thus anonymizing the outgoing requests by masking their real IP address and assigning a different IP before sending them to the target web server.) Instead, a web unblocker intelligently manages proxies.
Features of a Web Unblocker
The features and capabilities of a web unblocker include the following:
Proxy Type Management
The ML-powered automatic proxy type management tool evaluates and chooses the proxy pool that best works on a particular website. It also selects the right proxy type for the web scraping task and rotates the assigned proxy periodically while maintaining the lowest response time possible. This mechanism guarantees the highest success rate when scraping data from websites.
Browser Fingerprinting
The web unblocker can generate online fingerprints that can accurately pass off as real users’. It achieves this by incorporating headers, cookies, browser attributes, and proxies to create user personas or profiles that are as close to organic users as possible. In addition, this solution can dynamically generate the profiles by using different building block combinations. This way, it bypasses all website blocks and anti-bot measures as it passes the test for a real human user. It’s through the generated and accurate browser fingerprints that the web unblocker avoids CAPTCHA codes as it achieves human-like browsing.
JavaScript Rendering
This tool is also capable of rendering JavaScript-heavy websites. This makes it ideal for large web scraping exercises, especially since web developers are increasingly using JavaScript to create more interactive user-facing/front-end infrastructure. The web unblocker, however, stands out from other web scraping solutions as it doesn’t utilize headless browsers or their drivers. (A driver, in this case, is used to control the headless browser, which is a browser that doesn’t have a graphical user interface.)
This tool eliminates the need to set up and use a headless browser, which can be complicated if you don’t know how to use drivers such as Selenium and Puppeteer. Instead, all you have to do is to include a text-based header with your requests. If this header is included, the web unblocker will render all JavaScript code and store it as an HTML file or PNG screenshot.
Auto-retry Capability
The web unblocker can automatically detect when a particular web scraping request fails to return a response. It does this by checking the status code returned by the server. If this happens, it first reconfigures itself by choosing a user profile before resending the request.
Location-specific Targeting
This AI-powered solution is designed to choose from a collection of millions of different types of IP addresses, primarily datacenter and residential proxies, from tens of countries around the world. For this reason, it enables you to access location-specific content by allowing you to connect via a proxy located in that particular location. In fact, the web unblocker promotes country, city, and coordinate-specific targeting.
Session Maintenance
The web unblocker allows you to use the same proxy to make several requests. Like the JavaScript rendering function, all you have to do is include a text-based header that identifies a particular session ID. Session maintenance prevents the server from timing you out due to inactivity, which would ordinarily force you to initiate a new session. Thus, it ensures continuity, saves time, and boosts the speed of large-scale web scraping.
Under this setup, the web unblocker maintains the session for up to 10 minutes, at which point it assigns a new proxy. This prevents the sending of an excessive number of requests from a given proxy, thus avoiding IP blocks. You can visit the Oxylabs website to learn more about a web-unblocking tool and its possibilities.
Conclusion
A web unblocker is a handy tool when undertaking large-scale web scraping. It’s capable of bypassing anti-bot measures, thus guaranteeing continuous data extraction. For instance, it helps you avoid IP bans and CAPTCHAs. It also mimics human browsing by creating accurate online personas. What’s more, it’s capable of rendering JavaScript-heavy websites as well as facilitating location-specific targeting.
