There is no doubt that we are quickly accelerating toward a more data-driven future. The fact is that more data-driven firm growth strategies have come up because of the quick development of data analytics, the increase in computing power, and the immediate accessibility of big data.

Therefore, it is crucial for people to gather data from all the available business websites for research purposes. But the biggest question remains, how can one legally access this data? Regarding this, web-scraping helps to answer this concern. But all you need to do is leverage a proxy to ensure you hide any traces.

According to research, about 26% of internet users accessed the internet using a VPN or proxy server in 2018. Remember that using a proxy when web scraping is one of the best practices you can leverage. This is because it will help to protect and anonymize the identity of the scraper.

If you are looking to perform a significant web scraping operation, proxies are your best bet. Adding proxies to your scraping activities is beneficial in several ways; the only problem could be getting started.  It is easier to monitor and correct proxies than to develop and maintain them.

So before you start using a proxy, you can ask yourself the following:

• What is the role of a proxy in your scrapping program?
• What are the number of proxies your project will need?
• Do you need a static residential proxy or a rotational residential proxy?
• Where is the best and safest place to get them?

This guide helps you to understand more about static residential proxies and how useful they can be for your firm. Besides, you will understand how it makes things simpler and how to avoid delays when using residential proxy services.

How to Use Residential Proxies?

Residential proxies give you access to a pool of IP addresses from your preferred locations. Your needs and pricing plan will determine the pool size of your IP addresses.

Certain programs help manage proxies you can leverage and link manually after getting them. Alternatively, if you use a residential proxy for data mining, you can link it manually via a scraper. The only thing you need to do is to select your preferred location and enjoy online freedom.

Types of Residential Proxies

There are two types of residential proxies, they include static and rotational residential proxies. Now, let’s explore their differences one-by-one.

Static Residential Proxy

Static residential proxies don’t allow users to change servers. You will remain on the same IP address until you decide to change your IP address. Static residential proxy has been available for a long time, but it’s valuable in some circumstances.

For instance, you may need to maintain the same IP address for a long time in situations like managing social media pages. Therefore, this method can come in handy when scraping data from social media pages of a desired location.

Rotational Residential Proxy

With a rotational proxy, it modifies your IP addresses by your predetermined standards. This is one of the most effective methods for web scraping. A good example is when you are gathering sales and marketing data for your organization. You’ll need to have a rotational residential proxy that keeps changing after every few minutes or with every new request to ensure that your IP address is not flagged.

To achieve the best results with this proxy, you can set it to assign a new IP address every time you make a new request. Alternatively, you can set the proxy to rotate after every few minutes. The beauty of rotating proxies is that it simplifies many tasks.

Benefits of Using Residential for Web Scraping

Most businesses are keen to make data-driven decisions that can provide data-powered services. The best way they can achieve this is by using web scraping to collect valuable data on industry and market trends. With residential proxies, you can be certain that your organization will be able to scrape data from many sites efficiently.

Here are some of the advantages of using a residential proxy for web scraping:

1. They Help to Prevent IP bans

It is common for business websites to put a crawl rate to limit the amount of data that may be crawled from their sites. This helps to prevent scrapers from generating excessive queries that end up slowing down the website speed.

The good thing about using a residential proxy from a large pool is to ensure the crawler can circumvent the rate constraints. This is because they are sending access requests from many IP addresses. As a result, it will not be easy for websites to ban a crawler if you surpass the crawl rate limit.

2. Allow High Volume Scraping

It is impossible to use software to detect if a web page is being scraped. But one thing is for sure, the number of activities a scraper has makes it easier to trace the scraping activity.

But when a scraper repeatedly browses a specific website too quickly or at specified times of the day, they can be recognized and worse, get banned. That’s why it is advisable to use proxy servers to maintain privacy and anonymity.

Besides privacy, you can access more website pages simultaneously, whether they are the same or different. Therefore, it is easier for a company to access a high volume of data without getting banned.

3. Access Region-Specific Content

To stay ahead of your competitors from different regions, you will need to keep an eye on your rivals. Therefore, web scraping will help the marketing and sales department to understand their rivals’ game plans in a certain location. As a result, it will be easy for them to offer suitable product features and prices for their targeted clientele.

With the aid of a residential proxy and IP address of a desired region, the crawler is better placed to access all the content available on their websites. Besides, this is safer for your organization as there are minimal chances for requests that originate in the same area to get blocked. Therefore, this gives you a step ahead of your competitors if you want to access their target market.

4. Helps to Heighten Security

The good thing about using a proxy server is its ability to conceal a user’s computer’s IP address. This is beneficial as it adds a layer of anonymity to your organization. Therefore, you can go ahead and enjoy online freedom and gather valuable data for your organization.

Final Thoughts

With data being like a goldmine in today’s business world, you will need to be smart when collecting it. Therefore, you need to use a web scraping proxy to help you keep an eye on costs, gather data for marketing research, and keep tabs on your competitors.

A residential proxy is one of the best proxies you can leverage for scraping. Therefore, you need to ensure that you use one from a reputable organization other than using a free proxy.