{"id":6152,"date":"2023-10-18T14:47:43","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T14:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/royadata.io\/blog\/?p=6152"},"modified":"2023-10-18T14:47:43","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T14:47:43","slug":"proxies-for-scraping-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/royadata.io\/blog\/proxies-for-scraping-google\/","title":{"rendered":"Proxies for Preventing Bans and Captchas When Scraping Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The last thing you need when collecting large volumes of data from Google is an IP ban. The second-to-last thing you need is a captcha checking in on your human-ness. Each of these protection measures is employed by the search giant to weed out bots, which is exactly what you\u2019re running if you\u2019ve come to this article.<\/p>\n

Before we get into specific ways to prevent these terrible things, I\u2019d like to address the ethical aspect of scraping Google<\/strong>. As a rule of thumb, yes, scraping Google is ethical. Harvesting data in and of itself is a common practice today, so much so that Google does it all the time, pulling the same sort of data you\u2019re looking for from websites across the internet.<\/p>\n

Actually, it\u2019s so out in the open that Google has a whole page on its Googlebot<\/a><\/strong>, the data scraping tool that crawls the web on Google\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n

The discussion becomes possibly less ethical depending on what you plan to do with the scraped data. I\u2019m not here to judge, so I won\u2019t, but you should know that there a host of very legitimate and universally practiced functions that come from Google scraping, like competitive analysis<\/strong>, keyword crunching<\/strong>, and personal research<\/strong>. Flip the coin and you\u2019ll find an equally large number of illegal functions, like DDoS attacks and unsolicited bulk email marketing.<\/p>\n

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The ethics of scraping Google\u2019s treasure trove of data is in your hands.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You might also be wondering why Google has IP bans and captchas if so many scraping methods are technically legitimate. Put simply, Google wants humans using its site<\/span><\/strong>. Sort of like Terminator, the robots are inherent harbingers of possible death and destruction, and Google wants to safeguard websites on the internet from all those nefarious activities scraping allows. Individual humans can\u2019t bring such evil things to the web, so Google is fine with them.<\/p>\n

You can see this played out by the two levels of security your IPs will have to go through. Google doesn\u2019t start o\ufb00 by banning your proxy IPs (unless you\u2019ve done something very bad) \u2014 no, it starts by presenting a captcha. This is specifically designed to baffle bots. You\u2019ve seen the captcha box before, and if you\u2019re scraping you probably see it often. This is the first tier \u2014 the second is a ban, which can be permanent or impermanent, depending on your infraction.<\/p>\n

The question remains,<\/p>\n

<\/span>How do you get around those bans and captchas?<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

We\u2019ve got six methods, listed below.<\/p>\n\n

<\/span>1. Limit Individual Proxy IP Use<\/span><\/h3>\n

I\u2019ll start with one of the more basic principles of web scraping etiquette. In most scenarios, you or your company will be using large batches of proxies<\/a> to do the data collecting. This is almost always the case because the whole point is to scrape data in large amounts quickly, and you can\u2019t do that very e\ufb00ectively if you only have 5 proxies.<\/p>\n