3 questions marketers ask before buying proxy packages
Although they might sound weird for the layman, proxies are nothing new in the online space. If you own a business, you probably need to tighten your belt when it comes to taking a larger share of your market. Well, proxies can help you do exactly that.
What are proxies? Proxies act as a bridge between you and the rest of the internet. Before it gets to its destination or the website you want to connect to, your request will always go through the proxy first.
Once proxies’ servers take a response from the web servers, they go straight to the user. In turn, that ensures a higher level of anonymity since your real IP address is secured.
The truth is that marketers are leveraging the benefits of proxies to gain a competitive edge. Otherwise, how else would you explain the use of proxies when scraping data for market research?
Why marketers buy proxy IPs?
Data is becoming more important every year, meaning that data-driven decisions are key for any modern corporation. Up to 59% of businesses already rely on data to at least some capacity. And while this is a large figure already, analysts foresee that even more businesses will turn to data in the future.
However, competing in today’s market is challenging, but wise and informed businesses can take advantage of technological progress and automatically get the data they need.
Today all data professionals rely on data gathering techniques, out of which web scraping is the most common. When it comes to the genuine technology required, minus the process of scraping itself, proxies are very important. As most websites try to avoid and protect themselves from DDoS attacks, they usually block or ban IP addresses that send numerous requests in a short amount of time, which is exactly how scrapers work when they gather data.
Data scraping is one of the reasons why marketers invest in proxy IPs. Most of them choose rotating proxies as it can provide random IP addresses constantly, allowing them to scrape data successfully and avoid restrictions.
Should I get public or private proxies?
Public proxies are available to anyone. Meaning that everyone with internet connection can rely on free proxy servers through their internet browser. However, public proxies are known to be extremely slow and unpredictable.
When you decide to use a public proxy, you will expose your company’s network to multiple threats, which means that you’ll need to deal with hackers that can reconfigure your proxy settings to a malware infection that will sooner or later turn your machine into a zombie.
On the other hand, if you decide to invest in private proxies, you’ll be given a unique IP that only you will be able to use. So, your PC will not be under threat of getting hacked, and you will keep your privacy too.
Should I buy proxies with shared IPs or dedicated ones?
A shared IP means that several thousands of users will access the internet with the exact same IP address. But a dedicated proxy is a whole different thing. It’s a unique, dedicated IP address that only you can use.
Pretty much like other types of proxies, the choice between these two depends entirely on your needs. Firstly, you will need to make your mind and decide what you’re going to use your proxies for.
If your main purpose is social media scraping, then you will need to rely on a dedicated proxy to avoid the likelihood of being blocked or shadow-banned.
On the other hand, a shared proxy has its own advantages. A shared proxy is commonly used in SEO since you don’t need a unique IP address in order to rank your website higher.
Remember- a reliable proxy is one that serves your business needs. Typically, marketers pick the type of proxy they need based on two main factors: first of all, purpose and then the number of IPs they require.
