Proxy Basics and Business Use Cases

If you live part of your life on the internet, you might have heard of proxies. However, many of us do not really know what they do and how they can help in business. Well, it’s never too late to learn. By the end of this article, you’ll be itching to implement this tool in your daily online activities, whether for work or at home.

A proxy hides your actual IP and replaces it with its address instead. One type is something the techies refer to as residential proxies. If you use it, what shows up isn’t the address of the data center or your personal IP but the location of the residential proxy. Such proxies are a challenge to identify. There are many uses of residential proxies. You can use them to bypass geographical restrictions or monitor a website’s SEO and optimize it.

Proxy Basics and Business Use Cases

Proxy Basics

What is a proxy’s primary job? What it does is it transports data through various protocols on the internet. It acts as the middleman, an intermediary server, that connects computers like yours and mine to whatever online destination we want to visit.

Aside from acting as the go-between, proxies offer privacy, security, and functionality. By using a proxy, web traffic flows to the target location without being interrupted. The content from the destination then returns through the proxy back to the client’s computer.

Business Use Cases for Proxies

If you’re running a company, big or small, you’ll find that proxies are very beneficial. They solve the everyday problems that you might face as a business owner. Let’s look at seven common use cases.

SEO Monitoring

Most companies have websites, but many don’t rank well on search engines. This is where an SEO strategy comes into action. By optimizing keywords, links, and page titles, visibility improves, which drives more traffic (and customers) to your website.

Now, it’s crucial to understand that SEO or digital monitoring goes hand in hand with web scraping. If you’re looking to analyze what your competitors are doing, data scraping with residential proxies is your best option.

You’ll want to gather data on popular keywords, monitor the prices of your competition, and learn all about their business strategies. After that, you’ll use all that information and build on your website’s SEO. Without the help of residential proxies, you’ll face difficulties, like blocked IPs, when scraping large amounts of information.

Web Crawling

When you’re trying to extract large databases of content, you might go crazy doing it manually. Instead, most companies use bots to crawl through thousands of web pages within minutes. This saves businesses a lot of time.

However, a lot of websites implement security measures to detect bots. This is where residential proxies are helpful. They mask your IP address and look like actual users searching for data, so your web crawling can go on undetected.

Data Collection

One widespread use case among e-commerce companies is gathering data from multiple sources. Online businesses need to know what their customers want, how they feel about certain products, and how they behave. All of this information will turn into valuable, actionable insights – but how do you compile everything?

This is where you can combine bots and residential proxies to avoid geo-restrictions and blocked IPs. In no time, you’ll have data from different e-commerce platforms, both local and global ones. You’ll then use this information to create better products for your customers and drive sales.

Ad Testing and Verification

In terms of ads, there are two ways proxies function. Residential proxies will allow you to test your advertisements in a few different locations. This way, you’ll know if they appear the way they should. A proxy will also help with detecting fraudulent ads created by competitors to bring you down. All you need to do is mask your actual IP address with a proxy and stay anonymous while you search for irrelevant adverts.

Social Media Monitoring

Running a business doesn’t just involve operating a storefront and a website. Today, you need to have multiple social media accounts. If you need to promote your brand in different locations or reach out to different audiences, a proxy will come in handy. It’ll also help you gain insights into user behaviors in various regions.

App Testing

Let’s say you’re an app developer who has designed an application that looks and behaves differently depending on a user’s location. You’ll want to ensure every function works as it should by setting up different parameters. Your app might contain ads and location services. How do you execute your testing smoothly? That’s right – by using a proxy!

Faster Browsing While Saving on Bandwidth

If you think surfing the internet with a proxy will slow browsing speeds, you’re totally wrong. In fact, what happens is that proxies will save copies of sites on their end. Thus, your browser won’t have to fetch all the website content from the web server. This is called caching. Caching, aside from speeding up the loading of sites, also conserves bandwidth.

Privacy, Security, and Functionality

There are so many business use cases for proxies, from market research to app testing and cheaper internet bills. It’s no wonder that more and more companies are turning to proxy service providers. You’ll want to find a reputable one that suits your needs and budget. A vendor like IPRoyal services many locations worldwide and seems to be gaining popularity with each passing day. No harm in checking them out!