Mimicking human behavior when scraping websites like Immowelt is essential to prevent detection and possible blocking by anti-scraping mechanisms. Here are some strategies you can implement in your web scraping script to simulate human-like behavior:
1. Use Realistic User Agents
Change the user agent to mimic different browsers and devices. You can rotate user agents on each request to make them appear as if they are coming from different users.
import requests
from fake_useragent import UserAgent
user_agent = UserAgent()
headers = {'User-Agent': user_agent.random}
response = requests.get('https://www.immowelt.de/', headers=headers)
2. Implement Delays
Add delays or random sleep intervals between requests to mimic the browsing timing of a human.
import time
import random
time.sleep(random.uniform(5, 10)) # Sleep for a random time between 5 and 10 seconds
3. Use Proxies
Utilize proxies to distribute the requests over multiple IP addresses, reducing the chance of being blocked by IP-based rate limiting.
proxies = {
'http': 'http://10.10.1.10:3128',
'https': 'https://10.10.1.11:1080',
}
response = requests.get('https://www.immowelt.de/', proxies=proxies)
4. Limit Request Rate
Do not send too many requests in a short period. You can throttle requests to a reasonable rate that mimics human browsing speed.
5. Use Headless Browsers with Selenium
Use a headless browser that can execute JavaScript and handle complex interactions like a real browser.
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
from selenium.webdriver.common.proxy import Proxy, ProxyType
import time
options = Options()
options.headless = True
options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
# Set up a proxy if necessary
proxy = Proxy()
proxy.proxy_type = ProxyType.MANUAL
proxy.http_proxy = 'ip:port'
proxy.ssl_proxy = 'ip:port'
capabilities = webdriver.DesiredCapabilities.CHROME
proxy.add_to_capabilities(capabilities)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, desired_capabilities=capabilities)
driver.get('https://www.immowelt.de/')
time.sleep(5) # Let the user actually see something!
driver.quit()
6. Handle Cookies
Accept and manage cookies just like a regular browser would. This can be done with requests.Session in Python or by using a headless browser with Selenium.
session = requests.Session()
response = session.get('https://www.immowelt.de/')
7. Click Buttons and Navigate
With tools like Selenium, you can interact with the page by clicking buttons and navigating through pagination, which is less suspicious than direct URL manipulation.
from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get('https://www.immowelt.de/')
next_page_button = driver.find_element_by_xpath('//button[text()="Next"]')
next_page_button.click()
8. Analyze the Website's Behavior
Before you start scraping, manually visit the website and observe how it loads content, how it handles navigation, and the timing between actions. Try to replicate this behavior in your scraping script.
9. Be Ethical and Legal
Always comply with the website's robots.txt file and terms of service. Ensure you are not violating any laws or terms of use when scraping.
Remember, while these strategies can help you scrape data without being detected, it's important to scrape responsibly and ethically. Overloading a website with requests can affect its performance and can be considered a denial of service attack. Always check the legality of scraping a specific website and respect the website's terms of service.
