What kind of proxies are best for Yelp scraping?

When scraping Yelp or any other website with strict anti-scraping measures, it is important to use proxies to avoid detection and IP bans. There are several types of proxies that you can use for Yelp scraping:

1. Residential Proxies: These are IP addresses provided by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to homeowners. They are legitimate IP addresses tied to a physical location, making them less likely to be blocked or detected as proxies. However, residential proxies can be more expensive than other types of proxies.

2. Rotating Proxies: These proxies change IP addresses at regular intervals or with each new request. This helps to mask scraping activity and minimizes the chances of being detected or banned. Rotating proxies can be either datacenter or residential IPs.

3. Datacenter Proxies: These are the most common types of proxies, which are housed in data centers. They offer a high level of anonymity and are generally cheaper than residential proxies. However, they can be more easily detected by websites since they come from a range of IP addresses known to be owned by hosting companies.

4. Mobile Proxies: These proxies route traffic through mobile devices and use mobile IP addresses. Like residential proxies, they are considered highly trustworthy because they correspond to real devices used by actual individuals.

For Yelp scraping, residential or rotating residential proxies are usually the best choice because they mimic the behavior of real users. Yelp has strong anti-bot measures, and using a residential proxy can help to reduce the likelihood of being flagged as suspicious.

When setting up your scraping tool, you should rotate your proxies and set reasonable delays between requests to further avoid detection. It's also important to respect Yelp's terms of service and not to overload their servers with too many requests in a short period.

Here's an example of how you might set up a simple web scraper in Python using the requests library and a proxy:

import requests
from itertools import cycle
import traceback

# List of residential proxies to rotate
proxies = [
    'http://user:password@proxy1:port',
    'http://user:password@proxy2:port',
    'http://user:password@proxy3:port',
    # ...add as many proxies as you have...
]

proxy_pool = cycle(proxies)

url = 'https://www.yelp.com/biz/some-business'

for i in range(1, 10):  # Scraping 10 pages as an example
    # Get a proxy from the pool
    proxy = next(proxy_pool)
    print(f"Request #{i}: Using proxy {proxy}")

    try:
        response = requests.get(url, proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy})
        print(response.text)  # or do something with the response
    except:
        # If error, print the traceback and continue with the next proxy
        traceback.print_exc()
        continue

Remember that web scraping can be legally and ethically contentious, and you should always ensure that your activities comply with the website's terms of service, as well as local and international laws.