How to Grab Zillow Data: Real Estate API Alternatives

Don't fight Zillow's anti-climbing, try this wildcard.

Recently, a lot of real estate data analysis of the old iron asked me, Zillow's API is now more and more limited to death, want to grab data in bulk how to do? In fact, you can use proxy IP to save the country, but there are a lot of tricks here. Today we will nag some real, teach you how to use ipipgo family proxy service to.

Why do you have to use a proxy IP?

Zillow's anti-climbing system thief, the same IP request more than 20 times in a row, light speed limit heavy seal. Last year, there is a buddy do not believe in evil, with their own broadband hard just, the results of the IP was pulled black for three months on the site can not go. At this time it is necessary toProxy IPs to act as stand-ins, changing vests with each request to make the site think it's being accessed by a different user.

Choose a proxy IP by looking at these doorways

Agent service providers on the market are a mixed bag, it is recommended to focus on three points:
1. IP Survival Time: Residential dynamic IPs are more secure than server room IPs
2. geographic locationPrioritize U.S. domestic IP segments
3. Replacement frequency: it would be better to change IPs automatically with every request

I have to introduce my own products here.ipipgo Dynamic Residential ProxyThe success rate of catching Zillow can be more than 92%. Their IP pool is automatically updated every hour, and each session automatically switches the exit IP, the key is that you do not have to maintain your own IP list.

Hands-On Proxy Configuration

Using Python's requests library as an example, it's super easy to configure with ipipgo's proxy service:

import requests

proxies = {
    'http': 'http://用户名:密码@gateway.ipipgo.io:端口',
    'https': 'http://用户名:密码@gateway.ipipgo.io:端口'
}

response = requests.get('https://www.zillow.com/...' , proxies=proxies)

Note that you have to change the username and password in the code to your own account, ipipgo background can directly generate this configuration code. It is recommended to randomly sleep 1-3 seconds before each request, so that it is more like a real person operation.

Five Tips for Avoiding Backcrawl

1. Change the User-Agent for each request, don't always use the same browser logo.
2. Don't just pull the wool over the eyes of one area, but alternate between different cities.
3. Don't panic when encountering CAPTCHA, immediately stop for 15 minutes and then change IP address to continue.
4. 1-5 a.m. (U.S. time) backcrawl detection will be a bit looser
5. Regularly clear cookies, do not let the site remember your fingerprints

Frequently Asked Questions QA

Q: Is it okay to use a free proxy?
A: Don't! Free proxies have been used by crawlers for a long time, and Zillow's blacklist is full of these IPs, so using them is just like shooting yourself in the foot.

Q: How much data security is captured per day?
A: It is recommended that newbies control up to 500 entries per day, and use ipipgo's auto-speed function to set the interval of 10 seconds/time.

Q: What should I do if I encounter a 403 error?
A: immediately change the IP + change the request header + reduce the frequency of the three companies, if you continue to report errors on the stop 2 hours and try again. ipipipgo's client has an automatic retry mechanism, can handle these moths.

Tell the truth.

In fact, the matter of catching data is a cat and mouse game, the key to see whose tool is more slippery. Using the right proxy IP is equivalent to opening a stealth hang, but we should also pay attention to not too ugly. Recently I found that some sellers are selling Zillow data, so let's not touch this kind of data. Honestly use ipipgo to do real estate analysis, to help customers find potential properties is the right way.

Finally remind, the new registration ipipgo remember to lead 3 days trial, enough to test the crawl process. Their customer service response is quite fast, the last time I raised a work order at two o'clock in the middle of the night, ten minutes to solve the problem of proxy configuration, which is indeed more reliable than some foreign service providers.