Masking an IP address may be required for various tasks - from accessing blocked content to bypassing anti-bot systems of search engines and other online resources. I found interesting about how this technology can be used to solve corporate problems, and prepared an adapted translation of it.
There are several options for implementing a proxy:
- Resident proxies Resident IP addresses are IP addresses issued by ISPs to homeowners, they are noted in the databases of regional Internet registries (RIRs). Residential proxies use exactly these IPs, so requests from them are indistinguishable from those sent by real users.
- Server proxies (data center proxy). Such proxies are in no way associated with Internet providers for individuals. Addresses of this type are issued by hosting providers who have purchased address pools.
- Shared proxy. In this case, one proxy is used by several users at the same time; can be both server-based and provided by providers for their users.
- Private proxies. In the case of a private or dedicated proxy, only one user has access to the IP address. Such proxies provide both specialized services and hosters, Internet providers and VPN services.
All of these options have their advantages, but residential proxies are increasingly being used for corporate use. The main reason for this is that such proxies use the real addresses of different ISPs in different locations (countries, states / regions and cities). As a result, no matter who interacts with, it looks like it is carried out by a real user. It would never occur to any online service to block requests from real addresses, because this could be an appeal from a potential client.
This opens up a range of opportunities for companies. Let's talk about how they use residential proxies to solve business problems.
Why does a business need a proxy
According to Distil Networks, an anti-bot traffic company, up to 40% of web traffic on the Internet today is not generated by humans.
At the same time, not all bots are good (like search engine crawlers), site owners seek to protect themselves from many bots in order not to allow them to access the data of the resource itself or learn important information for business.
The number of bots that are usually not interfered with was 2017% in 20,40, and another 21,80% of bots were considered “bad”: site owners tried to ban them.
Why would companies try to bypass such blocking?
Getting real information from competitors' websites
One of the main uses of residential proxies is competitive intelligence. Today, there are tools that make it easy to track the use of server proxies - proxy provider address pools are known, so they can be easily blocked. Many popular online services - for example, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu - implement blocking systems based on ranges of IP addresses of hosting providers.
In the case of using a residential proxy, any request looks like it was sent by a regular user. In the event that you need to send a large number of requests, using residential proxies you can send them from addresses from any countries, cities and Internet providers associated with them.
Brand protection
Another practical application of residential proxies is brand protection and the fight against counterfeiting. For example, manufacturers of drugs - say, the drug Viagra - are always fighting with counterfeit generics.
Sellers of such replicas usually restrict access to their websites from countries where the official representative offices of the manufacturer are located: this makes it difficult to identify counterfeit dealers and present them with legal claims. With the help of residential proxies with addresses from the same country as the counterfeit site, this task can be easily solved.
Testing new features and monitoring performance
Another important way to use residential proxies is to test new features on your websites or applications - this allows you to see how everything works through the eyes of an ordinary user. Sending a large number of requests from IP addresses from different countries and cities also allows you to test applications under heavy loads.
This feature is also useful for performance monitoring. It is important for international services to understand, for example, how fast a site loads for users from certain countries. The use of residential proxies in the performance monitoring system helps to obtain the most relevant information.
Marketing and Advertising Optimization
Another use of residential proxies is testing advertising campaigns. With a residential proxy, you can see how this or that ad looks, for example, in search results for residents of a certain region and whether it is shown at all.
In addition, when promoting in various markets, resident proxies help to understand how effective, for example, search engine optimization works: whether the site is in the top search engines for the necessary queries in target languages and how its positions change over time.
Search engines are extremely negative about the collection of data using their resources. Therefore, they are constantly improving mechanisms for detecting data collectors and effectively blocking them. As a result, the use of data collection from search engines is now completely impossible.
It is impossible to block the execution of a large number of identical search queries through residential proxies - search engines cannot restrict access for real users. Therefore, this tool is great for guaranteed data collection from search engines.
Residential proxies are also useful for analyzing the advertising and marketing activities of competitors and their effectiveness. This technology is used both by the companies themselves and by agencies involved in promotion to order.
Content Aggregation
In the era of Big Data, many businesses are built on aggregating content from different sites and bringing it together on their own platform. Such companies also often have to use residential proxies, otherwise it will be difficult to maintain an up-to-date price database, for example, for certain categories of goods in different online stores: the risk of a ban is too high.
For example, to create a regularly updated comparison table with prices for vacuum cleaners in online stores, you need a bot that will constantly visit the necessary pages of these resources and update them. In this case, the most effective way to bypass anti-bot systems is to use this tool.
Custom data collection and analysis
In the past few years, companies that are professionally engaged in the collection and analysis of data on order have been actively developing. One of the brightest players in this market, the PromptCloud project, develops its own crawler tools that collect information for further use in marketing, sales or competitive analysis.
It is logical that the bots of such companies are also constantly banned, but due to the use of resident IPs, it is impossible to do this effectively.
Savings on getting local discounts
Among other things, having private local IP addresses can save resources. For example, many ticket and hotel booking sites display geo-targeted promotions. Only customers from specific regions can use them.
If a company needs to organize a business trip to such a country, then with the help of a resident proxy, it can try to find better prices and save money.
Conclusion
The ability to simulate requests from real users with a real local IP address is very useful, including for businesses. Companies use residential proxies for data collection, various tests, working with necessary but blocked resources, and so on.
Source: habr.com