You probably heard about people using proxy services. Some use them for anonymous browsing, others to bypass geo-restrictions. But there are many more scenarios where proxies are a game-changer for your business.
Whether you are involved in web scraping, market research, or SEO monitoring, it would be wise to get proxy services such as a proxy rotator to seamlessly access and gather data from the web effectively and at scale.
To know all the possibilities is hard, but you don’t want to pay for something you are not familiar with. We will fill this knowledge gap by outlining how proxy services can be helpful to you.
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Proxy and their types
Without a proxy, you connect to the internet by sending a request from your device to the website’s server. Proxies act as intermediaries by standing in between you and the internet. All your connections first go to the proxy server and are then forwarded to the target server.
Such a process hides your IP address. Your original one is not visible to the website because you send a request from a proxy that has its own IP address. Depending on the type of the proxy, multiple or only one user can access it at any time:
- If more than one user has access to a proxy, the proxy is shared. The prices of shared proxies are lower, but their performance is slower. Additionally, IP addresses might get banned by the misuse of other users.
- If only one customer can use a proxy at a time, then the proxy is called dedicated or private. They are better in speed and stability but are more expensive.
IP addresses of proxies have two main origins. It dictates the primary types of proxies.
- Residential proxies connect to the internet from ordinary home connections. So their IP addresses come from internet service providers (ISP) and regular devices. They are best at ensuring anonymity and changing your location.
- Datacenter proxies are maintained in data centers and created virtually by cloud servers. Unlike residential proxies, they are not affiliated with ISPs. Datacenter proxies are notable for their fast performance, which is useful when you need to transfer a lot of data.
Residential proxies are a better choice when you need a legitimate connection and a high level of anonymity. However, you will pay more for them, and their speed is limited by the internet plan of the ISP.
Datacenter proxies do not have this drawback because they come from well-maintained facilities with a commercial internet plan. They are best at speed, affordability and scalability. For this reason, data center proxies are a great starting point and more flexible in their use cases.
Anonymous browsing
You don’t need to be especially creative to find uses for data center proxies. They already help many businesses all around the globe, starting with the most basic one – anonymous browsing.
You can simply set up a proxy in your PC settings, and it will route all your requests through a proxy. Sometimes, however, you only want to access certain websites through a proxy. In that case, you can configure it only in your browser settings.
In both cases, proxies will shield your identity from websites, internet providers, or network administrators. Additionally, they will allow you to access geo-restricted content.
More from us: How To Set Up PD Proxy In Windows 10 PC
Web scraping
Companies cannot make decisions without the right information. And while the information is out there, it’s not always easy to collect it. That’s where web scraping comes in. It’s a process of collecting publicly available data on the internet by using automated software.
Instead of connecting to the website yourself, a bot can do it and send the data back to you. Since there is little manual labor involved, the process takes only seconds to complete. However, because of geo-restrictions or other limitations, not all of the data may be available to your bot.
Proxies are an essential part of bypassing restrictions and making web scraping possible. Web scraping with proxies leaves only the most important task for you – analyzing the data. Accurate information can help you accomplish a lot of tasks. Here are some popular examples:
- Market research. Web scraping with proxies will allow you to research the internet for data about the market you are in. Price information, competitor marketing, potential clients – you name it.
- Brand protection. Many details must be monitored while managing a brand: copyrighted material, negative reviews, misinformation, sale of counterfeits etc. If you don’t act swiftly, the damage can be unrepairable. Web scraping with proxies will allow you to protect your brand on a regular basis, regardless of where the content is posted.
All digital businesses need to have an active social media presence. But unlike ordinary users, they cannot achieve it as easily without multiple accounts. Looking after them is time-consuming and unimaginable without special tools. The problem is that these tools are not welcome by most social media platforms.
They are frequently banned by tracing their IP addresses. If one IP connects to multiple accounts, it will be banned. Proxies help to avoid this by hiding your IP and allowing you to appear from a different location. Residential proxies are used most frequently for managing multiple social media accounts.
Proxy providers
Different proxy services are unequal and some are better than others. They range from unreliable free ones to pricey big names. As creating proxies and taking care of them costs a lot of money, only a quality provider will help you out in an efficient and cost-effective way. Look for one which has flawless performance with no downtimes, a comfortable dashboard and straightforward pricing plans.
I recommend starting with a quality proxy service, such as Razorproxy. Their pricing plans are flexible as you pay per GBs used or IP’s ordered. Try them out for free before committing with a datacenter proxy trial of 2GBs.
Also read: Windows Could Not Automatically Detect this Network Proxy Settings
Conclusion
Practice beats theory, so knowing how proxy services can help you is only the first step. You need to actually use them. It’s the only guaranteed way to success.
