Zillow Data Capture: Home Price Trend Capture Solution

Core Pain Points in Zillow Data Capture

Real estate data analysis colleagues know that Zillow's home price trend is like a gold mine, but directly on the shovel hard digging is sure to have an accident. In the last three months, at least five friends complained to me that they just started the crawler program, and their IP addresses were blacklisted, and even the basic listing pictures could not be loaded. What's even worse is that some accounts are directly banned, and the hard work of organizing the historical data is all wasted.

Here's one.Deadly Misconceptions: Many people think that as long as you control the frequency of requests, you can do it. The real test found that Zillow's anti-crawling mechanism will also detect IP behavior characteristics. To cite a real case, a data analysis team with a single IP request 200 times a day, the results of the third day was blocked, because the IP access track appears obvious crawler characteristics (fixed time interval + the same User-Agent).

Proxy IP real-world solutions

That's when it's time toDynamic IP Poolto break the ice. Recently to help a real estate agency to do the program, they use ipipgo's residential proxy IP service, successfully achieve 30 consecutive days of stable collection. Here to share the specific operation:

How to choose between residential agent vs. server room agent

Here the point must be scratched:Server room agents are basically a giveaway in Zillow capture scenariosWe have done a comparison test. We have done a comparison test, with the same request frequency, the server room proxy survival time is only 2 hours on average, while ipipgo's residential proxy can work stably for more than 12 hours. This is because Zillow monitors the data center IP segments individually, like a supermarket security guard keeping an eye on people wearing masks and sunglasses.

There's a tawdry operation worth sharing: set the geographic location of the proxy IP to the state where the target listings are located. For example, if you want to catch the house price in Los Angeles, you should prioritize the California IP, which is found to reduce the CAPTCHA triggering rate of 37%, and it is estimated that the website feels that it is more reasonable for the local users to visit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need to log in again every time I switch IPs?
A: It is recommended to keep the session state, ipipgo's proxy supports session keep function, don't use the junk proxy that disconnects every time!

Q: What do I do when I encounter a CAPTCHA?
A: Immediately switch to a new IP + replace the fingerprint of the requesting device, do not head iron hard CAPTCHA recognition, it is a bottomless pit!

Q: How much IP volume is needed per day?
A: According to the calculation of 10,000 data/day, it is recommended to prepare 200-300 high-quality residential IP rotation, ipipgo's packages just cover this amount of

The secret to sustainable harvesting

Finally, I'll reveal a crushing tip:Different acquisition strategies should be used for weekdays and weekends. We've found that Zillow's anti-crawl detection relaxes on Saturdays and Sundays by about 20% (maybe the ops guys are off too?). . At this time, you can appropriately increase the collection speed of 30%, with ipipgo's intelligent routing function, you can pick up a lot of data volume for nothing.

Remember not to put your eggs in one basket, it's best to have 3 proxy packages with different price points at the same time. When one IP pool is abnormal, immediately switch to the backup program. Last time, a customer relied on this strategy, in Zillow updated the anti-climbing system on the same day can still maintain 60% collection efficiency, while the competitors have all been destroyed.