utf8 codec can't decode byte 0x96 in python

Question

I am trying to check if a certain word is on a page for many sites. The script runs fine for say 15 sites and then it stops.

UnicodeDecodeError: \'utf8\' co

Answer 1

The site 'http://www.homestead.com' doesn't claim to be sending you utf-8, the response actually claims to be iso-8859-1:

You must use the correct encoding for the page you actually received, not just guess randomly.