How to Collect Web Data Without Getting Blocked: A Practical Guide with Decodo

Has this ever happened to you? You spend hours building your scraper. The code runs clean. Requests are flying. The database starts filling up. And just when everything seems perfect…

❌ Your IP gets blocked.

❌ The site returns empty pages.

❌ CAPTCHAs show up every two clicks.

❌ Your boss (or your inner voice) asks: “Why did it stop working?”

And there you are — reinventing the wheel, testing 50 user-agents, launching requests through Tor, adding random delays like you’re casting spells… and still no stable results.

“Professionals don’t rely on luck. They build systems that work even when the environment turns hostile.” — Ali Abdaal

When it comes to serious web scraping — e-commerce, real estate, marketing, research — you need more than luck. You need tools that won’t leave you hanging when it matters most.

🎯 The problem: Anti-bot systems never sleep

Sites like Amazon, Idealista, TikTok or Google use:

• IP blocking
• CAPTCHAs and fingerprint detection
• Traffic pattern analysis
• JavaScript rendering to hide dynamic content

Scraping unprotected is like sneaking into a party with a floodlight over your head.

📖 Real Story: Real Estate Scraping Without Losing Our Minds

A few months ago, I worked on a project scraping real estate portals in Spain. The goal: extract daily listings from Idealista, Fotocasa, and Habitaclia — price, size, location, and more.

At first? Easy. But by day three:

• Idealista started returning blank pages.
• Fotocasa blacklisted our IPs.
• Habitaclia triggered CAPTCHA every few requests.

We tried everything: rotating user-agents, scraping at night, adding delays… Nothing worked reliably.

Then we integrated Decodo:

• We used residential proxies geolocated in Spain
• Enabled IP rotation with sticky sessions
• Simulated scroll, clicks, and user behavior

🔁 Our success rate jumped from 60% to 97% 🧘♂️ And finally, the dev team could sleep peacefully again.

“The biggest unlocks in productivity come from better systems, not brute force.” — Sam Altman

🧰 Decodo Features (and When to Use Them)

Decodo is more than a proxy provider. It’s a full-stack platform for modern scraping. Here’s what it offers:

🔄 1. Smart IP Rotation

📌 What it does: Automatically rotates your IP with each request (or session), avoiding blocks from repeated access.

✅ Use cases:

• High-volume scraping
• Crawling large product lists or paginated data
• Google SERPs and marketplaces

🎯 Choose between:

• Per-request rotation
• Sticky sessions (great for logins or session tracking)

“Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.” — Steve Jobs

🏠 2. Residential Proxies

📌 What it does: Simulates real users by routing traffic through actual ISP addresses.

✅ Use cases:

• Accessing geo-targeted content
• Price validation for ads and listings
• Multi-account automation on sensitive platforms

🎯 You can filter by country, city, ISP, or even ZIP code.

🔐 3. CAPTCHA Avoidance and Minimization

📌 What it does: Helps avoid or reduce the occurrence of CAPTCHA using smart IP rotation and cloaking techniques. It does not directly solve CAPTCHA but minimizes their likelihood.

✅ Use cases:

• Search pages behind forms
• Sites with anti-bot rate-limiting
• Login flows or profile navigation

🧠 4. Anti-Fingerprinting + Headless Detection

📌 What it does: Prevents detection based on browser info, OS, plugins, screen size, and behavioral patterns.

✅ Use cases:

• LinkedIn, Booking, TikTok
• Headless automation
• Browser-based scrapers using Puppeteer or Selenium

🌐 5. JavaScript Rendering Support

📌 What it does: Allows scraping of sites that load content dynamically via JavaScript (React, Vue, Angular).

✅ Use cases:

• Amazon, TikTok, YouTube
• Content that loads after scrolling/clicking
• SPAs (Single Page Apps)

🎯 Works perfectly with Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium.

🧪 Step-by-Step: How to Get Started with Decodo

1. Sign up for free: 👉 https://visit.decodo.com/raqXGD
2. Choose your proxy type: residential, datacenter, or mobile
3. Get your proxy credentials (host, port, user, password)
4. Integrate with your scraper

• Examples available for Python, Puppeteer, Playwright, Selenium, Scrapy, etc.

5. Enable IP rotation and tweak headers/delays as needed

6. Run your script and monitor success rates via Decodo’s dashboard

Here you will find a very detailed guide, which helps you to set up your proxies in less than 10 minutes

📚 Developer-Friendly Docs That Actually Help

One of Decodo’s strongest points is its clear, copy-paste-ready documentation.

✅ Language-specific guides

✅ Snippets that work out of the box

✅ Tips on avoiding detection and legal compliance

✅ Real-world examples for scraping Amazon, Google, etc.

“A tool without solid documentation is like a fast highway without road signs — quick, but dangerous.” — Me, after debugging proxy headers for 10 hours

✅ Best Practices for Serious Scraping

• Add randomized delays between requests
• Rotate user-agents and custom headers
• Avoid scraping sensitive or protected data
• Monitor error rates and adjust your strategy accordingly

📊 Proxy Comparison Table

💡 Real Use Cases

• Real estate scraping (Idealista, Habitaclia, Fotocasa)
• Price tracking on Amazon, Zalando, etc.
• SERP and SEO monitoring
• Competitor analysis & product aggregation
• Ad verification by city, ISP or device type

🎯 Conclusion

Tired of CAPTCHAs, blocks, and empty pages? Stop wasting hours debugging and start scaling like a pro.

🔗 Get started with Decodo today and access 125M+ IPs with advanced anti-bot protection: 👉 https://visit.decodo.com/raqXGD