Struggling to Scrape? How to Adapt to Google’s Latest Update
We didn’t even make it a month without big changes. Earlier this month, Google made massive changes to how their Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) work. And it’s one of those changes that either impacts you immensely, or not at all.
The TL;DR is that, if your current web scraping methods aren’t working anymore, you need to change your approach. The good news is that we’re aware of the change and can help you get back up and running.
What Did Google’s Latest Update Do?
On January 15th, 2025, Google made a major update to its SERP pages. Notably, browser rendering is required for anyone trying to access the results.
For most people, this isn’t a problem. JavaScript rendering is a default part of using a browser. But Web Scrapers are not normal people 😉 and this is where the biggest impact is felt.
Why Did This Happen?
The good news is that Google doesn’t have it out for web scraping – after all, what is a search engine but a giant web scraping machine itself? However, what Google is against is spam and malicious activity.
Over on TechCrunch, a Google spokesperson described the update as a way to “better protect our services and users from bots and evolving forms of abuse and spam”.
Now, web scraping – especially ethical web scraping – certainly isn’t malicious or abusive, but it does unfortunately use some of the same technologies and methods. The most effective approaches cut the rendering out as it isn’t needed. It’s purely a visual feature for human users. But given that search engines are primarily built for such people, this latest update makes a lot of sense, no?
How Can You Adapt?
If you made it this far, it’s because you’ve either encountered some problems scraping SERP results, or you want to stay ahead of the curve and ensure your projects remain successful. While it’s still early days, our initial advice is to stop using blocked methods and choose from a couple of alternative options.
#1 Stop Requesting Raw HTML.
This method was the most cost and resource efficient because it wasn’t rendering the JavaScript, amongst other things. Since the rules have changed, this approach isn’t going to work any more.
#2 Switch to Headless Browsers
Headless browsers don’t show the visual aspects of a website, but they can still render the HTML, CSS and JavaScript. If you’re coming from just raw HTML, this will be a more resource-intensive method, but it will be inline with Google’s latest update.
If this is something you’re considering, we can recommend headless browsers such as Playwright and Puppeteer. If you’ve already heard about these and just want to jump in, we’ve got a training course to help get you set up with either.
#3 Consider Switching to an API
Alternatively to headless browsers, you can automate the entire process instead. Obviously, we’re going to plug our own Web Scraper API here, but the clue is in the name.
Unlike configuring everything yourself, API is a service – it’s our obligation to ensure that it works, not yours 😉
The Easy Approach to Scraping SERPs
Our API is designed to deliver data from a URL, but that doesn’t mean we extract the raw HTML. Browser and JavaScript rendering is included by default, which makes it a reliable option for SERP scraping.
How Can Rayobyte Help?
While Google’s latest update is bad news, the good news is that you have a range of options ahead of you.
Want to keep control? Switch to a headless browser and carry on with your projects. If you do encounter any problems, we’re here to help. Our knowledge isn’t just limited to proxies, you know? Get in touch and we’ll see what we can do.
On the other hand, if you like the highly-automated approach and would rather someone else does all the technical work, that’s fine, too! As we just said, we’re more than a simple proxy company, so let our API handle our SERP scraping needs.
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