Why do scrapers need tailored detections?

Bot specialization means more difficult detection as each operator group can focus on one part of the bot, like telemetry, then chain those pieces together to make a specialized bot for each unique use case. Bots are now tooled and developed differently based on their use case — and that requires different detections for each kind of specialized bot.

Scrapers have been around for a while. Why are they such a problem now?

Content scrapers have become much more sophisticated since 2020. The profit potential for attackers during and after the COVID-19 pandemic increased dramatically because of supply chain shocks and shortages. Many items became highly sought after; for example, vaccines were hard to come by during the early part of the pandemic, and airline tickets and hotel reservations were prized once travel normalized again. Although scraper bots used to be relatively easy to detect, they’ve become more sophisticated, evasive, and persistent.

My content is publicly available on my website/app — why does it matter if someone takes it?

There are two big concerns: the sheer amount of content being taken, and the uses of that content after it’s been scraped. One, while you may choose to make a significant amount of content available publicly on your web pages, there’s a significant difference between a consumer looking up how much your product costs on your digital commerce site and your competitor scraping your entire product catalog to make sure their prices are always just a little lower than yours. Two, aside from competitive reasons, there are many ways scraped content can be used to harm you. For example, counterfeiters must make their fake goods look as realistic as possible, and they can use your product pictures, product descriptions, logo, etc., to do so.

Content Protector

Stop persistent web scrapers with tailored detections — protect your product content, pricing, and conversion rates.

Verify your bot or AI agent with Akamai. Submit a request for verified access.

Why scrapers matter now

Sophisticated scraper bots quietly siphon your product data, prices, images, and inventory signals to power price undercutting, inventory hoarding, and counterfeit sites — degrading site performance and skewing business metrics. In recent Akamai research across 6.9B ecommerce requests: - 42.1% were bots; 65.3% of bot traffic was bad scrapers - Targeted mitigation significantly reduced high‑risk bot requests and improved performance and conversion rates

Get the full context in Akamai’s State of the Internet report, Scraping Away Your Bottom Line. Read the report.

How Content Protector works

Content Protector applies specialized detections tuned for evasive scrapers that blend in as “humans” or legitimate bots.

Detect: Machine learning analyzes client- and server-side telemetry to spot scraping patterns.
Differentiate: Behavioral signals (mouse/keyboard/touch), session flow, and user journey analysis separate humans from bots.
Classify: Risk levels (low/medium/high) guide the right control without disrupting customers.
Respond: Choose from monitor, challenges, connection tarpits, or deny — nuanced controls that throttle or stop scraping without tipping off attackers.

Read the product overview. View the product brief.

Key capabilities for ecommerce

Headless and stealth browser detection: Custom JavaScript and protocol fingerprinting uncover headless and automated frameworks even in stealth modes.
Protocol- and application-level assessments: Validate how clients establish connections and whether they can execute expected business logic.
Behavioral analytics: Identify non-human navigation, anomalous SKU traversal, and cart interaction patterns common in inventory hoarding.
Risk-based responses: Slow abusive sessions, step up frictions, or block outright while keeping real shoppers moving.
Good-bot management: Distinguish beneficial crawlers from suspicious agents to protect SEO and partner integrations.

Protect pricing, inventory, and content without hurting SEO

Preserve search engine access
Maintain an allowlist of verified crawlers (e.g., major engines) and validate via reverse DNS and known IP spaces.
Route unknown “bots” into low-friction challenges and tarpits rather than blanket blocks.
Offer bot/agent verification to partners. Register bots and AI agents to reduce false positives.
Defend pricing and promo sensitivity
Detect abnormal price-page traversal, excessive category breadth, and rapid SKU diffing indicative of competitive scraping.
Shape responses: randomize or delay high-frequency price fetches from risky sessions; serve cached/obfuscated views when risk is high.
Stop inventory manipulation and scalping
Flag cart-stuffing and high-velocity add-to-cart patterns tied to headless clients.
Apply progressive frictions (tarpit, soft blocks, and dynamic challenges) during restocks and drops without degrading legitimate buyer flow.
Reduce content theft and counterfeit enablement
Throttle large-scale image and copy extraction.
Limit automated access to high-value PDP assets and PDFs when risk escalates, curbing fuel for fake sites.

AI-powered scraping and content abuse

Attackers increasingly pair scraping with AI to extract, normalize, and prioritize product data (SKU, price, discount, availability) at scale. This accelerates price undercutting and counterfeit site creation. Content Protector reduces the source fuel by detecting and throttling data harvesting in real time. For full brand protection, combine scraping defense with brand monitoring and takedown workflows to address impersonation and counterfeit storefronts.

How this differs from standard WAF “bot rules”

Traditional WAF bot controls and rate limits can catch obvious scripts, but evasive scrapers using residential proxies, headless browsers, and human-like pacing routinely bypass static rules. Content Protector adds: - Client integrity checks: protocol and JavaScript execution fingerprints that are hard to spoof at scale. - Behavioral decisioning: real human interaction and journey analysis versus header matching alone. - Risk-aware responses: subtle slowdowns and targeted challenges that degrade scraper ROI while preserving customer experience. - Good-vs-bad bot separation: treat beneficial crawlers differently, improving SEO and analytics accuracy.

Outcomes you can expect

Lower high-risk scraper traffic and infra costs
Faster pages and higher conversion rates during peak events
Cleaner business metrics for pricing, merchandising, and marketing decisions
Reduced exposure to price undercutting, inventory hoarding, and counterfeit reuse of your content

Common ecommerce use cases

Competitive price scraping and promo mining
Inventory hoarding, cart-jacking, and restock sniping
Media/article scraping and reposting that siphons audience and ad revenue
Metrics pollution that misguides demand planning and campaign spend

See it in action

Experience a live scraping simulation and the ML detections behind it. Request a demo
Verify partner bots and agents to reduce friction and false positives. Submit a verification request
Explore the research behind scraper economics and defenses. Download the SOTI report

FAQs

Why do scrapers require tailored detections? - Bot operators specialize. They chain best-of-breed components for telemetry spoofing, session management, and stealth rendering. Purpose-built detections aligned to scraping behaviors are needed to reliably catch them.

Why are scrapers a bigger problem now? - Post‑2020 shortages and high-demand drops increased profit opportunities for scalpers and counterfeiters. Tools improved, headless automation spread, and AI made data extraction faster and cheaper — making scrapers more persistent and evasive.

Why protect data that’s already public? - Scale and intent. A single competitor scraping your full catalog every few minutes can instantly undercut prices and drain inventory signals. Large-scale copying of images and descriptions also enables convincing counterfeit storefronts that divert your customers.