Scraping & anti-scraping: master these key issues to protect and boost your SEO

But how do you avoid scraping and protect your data while maintaining optimal site performance?
This article explains what scraping is, its impacts and the anti-scraping solutions to put in place:

• to defend your content,
• improve your SEO,
• and to ensure a quality user experience.

What is scraping and why does it threaten your site?

In this section, we explain what scraping is and why it poses a serious threat to your site’s security and SEO. Scraping is often perceived as a simple nuisance, but its impacts can be much more serious than we imagine.

Scraping is an automated technique used by bots to extract data from a website.

This can be for various types of content: text, images, business information, etc. Companies and developers can use “scrapers” to collect information for a variety of purposes, and often without the site owner’s consent.

In some cases, this data can be reused on other platforms, which can have a direct impact on your site’s SEO.

The main problem with scraping is that it steals your content without permission, which can lead to duplicate content. However, Google and other search engines do not like this and can penalize your site by demoting it in the search results.

What are the impacts of scraping on your SEO?

Now that you understand what scraping is, it is important to be aware of the consequences of this practice on your website, especially on your natural referencing (SEO).

Discover below the main impacts of scraping, in order to better understand the risks to which you are exposed.

The consequences of scraping go far beyond just the loss of content. Here are the major impacts to consider:

• decreased visibility on search engines. If a scraper copies your content and publishes it on another site, Google may consider that content to be duplicate. This could hurt your SEO positioning and reduce your traffic;
• increased server load. Scraping generates a large amount of requests to your server, which can slow down your site and affect its response time. A slow site is a bad signal for search engines, which can also hurt its SEO;
• theft of sensitive data. In some cases, sensitive or confidential information, such as product data or marketing strategies, can be extracted by bots. This represents a major risk for your company;
• Compromising user experience. If your site is constantly under attack from scrapers, it can cause a degradation in the quality of the user experience. Slow loading times or errors can lead to a misperception of your brand.

How to detect scraping on your site?

Early detection of scraping is essential to prevent it from affecting your SEO performance.

In this section, we explore the different ways to spot this malicious activity on your site. The more vigilant you are, the better you can take action before it’s too late.

To protect your site from scraping, it’s important to be able to detect attempts to extract content.

Here are some signs that your site might be a victim of scraping:

• the sudden increase in traffic from certain sources or countries;
• abnormal user behavior, with repeated accesses to the same pages without interaction;
• strange fluctuations in SEO ranking, including a sudden drop in search results.

Implementing traffic monitoring tools can help you spot these suspicious behaviors early.

What is anti-scraping?

Anti-scraping refers to all the steps and practices put in place to protect a website against the unauthorized use of its data and content.

The goal of anti-scraping is:

• To ensure that the information on a site remains under the control of its owner,
• and that it is not used for commercial or competitive purposes without permission.

In a digital environment where information flows freely, it has become essential for companies to protect their sensitive data, whether it is related to products, services, prices, or even exclusive content.

Indeed, a site can be the victim of data extraction that harms both its business model and its reputation. The role of anti-scraping is to put measures in place to prevent this kind of behavior from being possible.

Beyond simple security, anti-scraping also aims to ensure the sustainability of a digital strategy by preventing any form of abusive exploitation. It’s about creating a digital environment where site owners can be confident that their information is protected and that their content remains proprietary.

This helps maintain competitiveness, user trust, and site performance over the long term. Google is also getting into anti-scraping by gradually tightening its rules, for the second time in 2025, on April 17, Google rolled out a new anti-scraping update for mobile SERPs.

Anti-scraping solutions to adopt to protect your site

Now that you have a clear idea of the dangers of scraping and its impacts, it’s time to take action.

In this section, we offer you a series of practical and effective solutions to protect your site from scrapers and secure your content.

Here are some effective strategies and solutions to prevent scraping and secure your content, while preserving your SEO.

Using CAPTCHAs

CAPTCHAs (tests to differentiate a human from a robot) are one of the simplest and most common solutions to prevent scrapers from extracting data.

By adding a CAPTCHA to forms or sensitive pages on your site, you can limit bot access.

Block Suspicious IP Addresses

The implementation of an IP blocking system makes it possible to restrict access to addresses identified as coming from bots.

In case of abnormal behavior (excessive frequency of visits or repetitive access), you can make the decision to block these IPs.

Geo-filtering

If your business is located in a specific country, you can limit access to your site to users from certain geographic regions.

This helps restrict access to bots that use servers in different countries to carry out their attacks.

Monitor HTTP requests

A best practice is to set up alerts on suspicious HTTP requests.

If you spot requests from bots trying to gather information in bulk, you can quickly block them.

Use content obfuscation techniques

By changing the appearance of your site’s content in subtle ways (such as dynamically coding text or inserting invisible tags), you make automatic extraction more difficult.

This makes it difficult for scrapers to do their job, but it doesn’t affect the user experience.

Analyze server logs

By regularly reviewing your server logs, you can identify scraping attempts. This makes it possible to detect suspicious patterns of behavior and take preventive measures quickly.

The link between anti-scraping and improving your SEO

In this section, we discuss the direct impact of implementing anti-scraping solutions on your SEO.

You’ll discover how securing your content can have positive effects on your visibility and search engine rankings.

It’s essential to understand that scraping protection directly contributes to improving your SEO.

Here’s how:

• Maintain a good loading speed. A site that is not slowed down by bots will be faster, which has a positive impact on its SEO ranking;
• Avoid duplication of content. By protecting your content from scrapers, you prevent your content from being duplicated elsewhere on the web, which improves your positioning in search engine results;
• Improve site security. A well-secured site generates more trust among users, which can reduce bounce rates and improve engagement, both of which are important factors for SEO.

In conclusion

Anti-scraping has become an essential component of a website’s security and SEO optimization strategy.

By protecting your data and preventing content theft, you not only ensure the safety of your users, but you also help maintain optimal SEO performance.

Implementing effective solutions against scraping is not only about avoiding content loss, but also about preventing risks related to data security and site performance.

Methods such as:

• the use of CAPTCHA,
• geo-filtering,
• Detection of abnormal activity,
• and blocking suspicious IP addresses.

With these solutions, you’ll stay ahead of unwanted bots and protect the integrity of your site.

Don’t forget that SEO, far from being just about optimizing your keywords, is also:

• a question of security,
• and user experience protection.

By eliminating the nuisance of scraping, you improve your visitors’ experience and therefore your results in a sustainable way.

In short, a site that is secure, fast and does not suffer from the impact of bots is one that, in the long run, will be more efficient, better referenced and better valued.

Make sure your business stays on top of its data and content by integrating anti-scraping solutions into your digital strategy today.