diff --git a/source/net/yacy/document/parser/html/ContentScraper.java b/source/net/yacy/document/parser/html/ContentScraper.java
index ce9cd9556..a3dfe8a16 100644
--- a/source/net/yacy/document/parser/html/ContentScraper.java
+++ b/source/net/yacy/document/parser/html/ContentScraper.java
@@ -547,7 +547,9 @@ public class ContentScraper extends AbstractScraper implements Scraper {
         
         // scrape document to look up charset
         final ScraperInputStream htmlFilter = new ScraperInputStream(new ByteArrayInputStream(page),"UTF-8", new MultiProtocolURI("http://localhost"),null,false);
-        final String charset = htmlParser.patchCharsetEncoding(htmlFilter.detectCharset());
+        String charset = htmlParser.patchCharsetEncoding(htmlFilter.detectCharset());
+        if(charset == null)
+               charset = Charset.defaultCharset().toString();
         
         // scrape content
         final ContentScraper scraper = new ContentScraper(new MultiProtocolURI("http://localhost"));