In 2023, the competitive business environment is still obsessed with the collection of valuable public data. The ability to extract information faster than your competitors has long been the key factor in gaining valuable insights and dominating other players in the market.
While the fixation on gathering knowledge from the web has never been higher, modern companies are always looking for new ways to collect valuable information faster than ever before. Everyone seems determined to intertwine their business model with the knowledge derived from public data. With plenty of success stories from the largest tech companies, companies go to extra lengths to become the next household name, while the competition has never been more steep.
If you want to learn the intricacies of data collection and extract information with unmatched efficiency, you’ve come to the right place. In this beginner’s guide, we will discuss the strategic benefits of internet privacy tools in aiding data-gathering efforts. Here you will learn why the most successful data aggregators buy residential proxies for fast and scalable collection of information.
If you are already familiar with the benefits of intermediary servers and want to find the best proxy provider for web scraping, check out comprehensive insights from the proxy market research, conducted by specialists at Proxyway. There you will find the best deals to buy residential proxies for data collection. However, keep in mind that just because one provider is at the top of the list, that does not mean that it’s the right fit for you. For example, Smartproxy is one of the best providers known for flexible deals and subscriptions, but Oxylabs might be a better option to buy residential proxies if you are a premium user. That being said, let’s jump into the process of learning about residential proxies and leveraging them to access unrestricted data from the web.
How Does a Proxy Server Work?
Before we start covering the intricacies of proxy servers and their different types, let’s take a closer look at how these middlemen servers do their magic. A proxy server works like an extra station to your web connection, but it is very different from regular hops between routers. Proxy servers remove the public IP address attached to your data packets and replace it with their own.
By removing your network identity from the equation, a proxy server erases any trace of your private data in the packets and acts as your representative for reaching the server. This way, the recipient has no idea who is the original sender, while a proxy just sends the received information back to you.
How Proxies Display Local Content
When a proxy server hides your IP address, that does not mean that the connection contains no information about the sender. That would be unwise, because recipient servers would treat all proxy connections with extreme caution, blocking them all on sight. Instead, proxy servers reveal their approximate location.
This is where the magic happens. If you get a plan from a reliable proxy provider, you can pick servers from any location of your choice. With such control over your connection, you can change your location at will, bypass IP blocking and region-based censorship and collect information from any site without restrictions.
Why Residential Proxies are the Best Choice for Data Scraping.
While most proxy services follow the same rules, they are often split into two categories based on the source of provided IP addresses: datacenter and residential proxies.
Datacenter proxy servers run on servers in designated facilities with powerful hardware, lower prices, and fast internet speeds. However, these addresses suffer from one big downside that makes them unusable for data collection procedures.
Most web servers judge the legitimacy of incoming connections based on the visitors’ public IP address. For most Internet users, these identities are supplied by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Their affiliation with the connection can be observed on any testing websites, and for many recipients, it is the vote of confidence that proves the legitimacy of your web traffic. Datacenter proxies are not associated with ISPs, and many website owners choose to block them on sight.
Residential proxies seem to underperform in any other category, but the extra level of privacy makes them the best option for automated data gathering. Instead of getting IPs from dedicated servers, they share the identity with real users supplied by their respective ISPs. Then, if a user or a data scraping bot visits a website, the target will have no way of distinguishing a residential proxy connection from real user traffic.
How Residential Proxies Empower Data Collection Efforts
As we already mentioned, residential proxy IPs are your best bet for comprehensive data aggregation. Because they use the public identities of real users, targeted web servers will not be able to distinguish a bot connection from a regular user unless the scraper sends too many connection requests. However, because the access request seems legitimate, it will make its way to the server a lot more often than a datacenter proxy connection.
How Businesses Use Residential IPs for Data Scraping
This section covers the most popular ways businesses use data collection tools in unison with residential proxies. Keep in mind that proxy connections are very versatile; therefore you can pioneer new ways to use residential IPs and remain undetected.
Gathering Market Insights
Anonymous data aggregation processes help companies gather valuable intel on competitor connections without exposing their real identity. Even better, the ability to rotate between different residential IPs at arranged time intervals creates perfect circumstances for continuous extraction and updates. This way, you can see any changes to the presented public information the second it goes live, and make changes to your strategy to gain a competitive edge.
Improving Data Quality
By mimicking organic user behavior, residential proxies ensure that none of the bot connections receives an IP ban or gets redirected to a decoy website. This way, all collected information is legitimate and can be used to plan adjustments for the future.
Enhancing Market Research
Once the data collection operation is in full swing, businesses can use comprehensive data to find new sources of valuable information and scale up the efforts with additional instances of data collection tools. This way, clients can target multiple competitors at the same time while utilizing the provided identities to never attract too much attention to one address.
Summary
If you want to get all the benefits from your data collection efforts, then residential proxy servers are the best investment you can make. With the help of a vast network of legitimate IPs, you can protect all scraping bots and learn everything there is to know about your competitors.
