Building ScrapeForge Day 4 featured image

Finishing the Logic on Day 4 of Building ScrapeForge

Day 4 of building ScrapeForge started with some steady progress. I spent the first few hours finishing the last bits of logic needed for scraping search engine results. If you want to see the earlier steps of this project, check out our latest updates for the full story.

Once the code was ready, I moved on to proxy rotation. This is a huge part of building ScrapeForge Day 4 because it keeps the system from getting blocked by the sites I'm trying to reach. I wanted to see if I could save some money by using free proxies instead of paid ones, just to see what would happen.

The Big Proxy Test

To keep things honest, I collected 2,000 free proxies and wrote a script to see which ones actually worked. Testing them was a big part of building ScrapeForge Day 4. I let the script run for about two hours while I worked on other tasks.

The Results Were Surprising

I gathered 2,000 different IP addresses from free lists.
The script spent two hours validating every single one.
In the end, only 139 proxies were actually usable.

That is a lot of effort for very little reward. When you look at how proxy servers work on a large scale, reliability is everything. Even the working ones had trouble handling basic HTTP status codes correctly, often timing out or returning errors.

The Real Cost of Free Tools

The main takeaway from building ScrapeForge Day 4 is that 'free' tools often cost you more in time than they save in cash. I spent my whole afternoon chasing dead links when I could have been coding new features. If you are building your own tools, you can find more advice in our helpful resources.

Building ScrapeForge Day 4 was a reality check. Moving forward, I am going to invest in a paid proxy service so I can focus on building a better tool rather than fixing broken IPs. Tomorrow, I'll be moving on to more stable solutions so I can actually get some real work done.