What are Residential Proxies?
Have you ever faced the issue of IP blocking?
It happens because of geo-blocking. Geo-blocking enables governments and online service providers to restrict access to certain content on the Internet, such as censored social media sites, news sites, or online video streaming sites like Netflix. You are denied access based on your geographical location or your IP address.
It is in such a situation that residential proxies become essential. With residential proxies, you can use different IP addresses. How?
Residential proxies hide your current IP address by covering it up with an authentic residential IP. They are of different types, such as static proxies, data center proxies, rotational proxies, etc. Each proxy serves a different purpose.
Advantages of Residential Proxies
There are many pros of using residential proxies. Let’s look at some of the major ones.
The following are the most critical advantages of residential proxies:
- One of the foremost advantages of residential proxies is protecting your IP address by masking it with other users’ IPs. These IPs are of real users, and hence, the issue of IP blocking doesn’t occur.
- They make your internet browsing experience or navigation much easier. This is because, with proxies, you are not denied access to specific restricted sites or web content.
- Residential proxies are incredibly beneficial for people doing business in different countries. They can reach out to people from other locations without getting their IPs blocked.
- They are optimal for web scraping. Web scraping uses bots to extract content from different sites. Since it is difficult to detect proxies as bots, they can be easily used for web scraping without worry.
- These proxies are not limited. In other words, they are scalable or can be generated in large quantities as there are millions of residential proxies.
- Another great advantage of residential proxies is their localization or that they are not limited to any particular country or city. In other words, they can be from any country or city.
In Which Cases You Should Use Residential Proxies?
Residential proxies are generally used in the following cases:
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SEO Monitoring:
As you might know, Seo monitoring is an important aspect of every online business or business marketing. However, in recent times, e-commerce has taken the Internet by storm. Almost every other person is heading to the Internet to promote his or her brand or products.
It is where SEO Monitoring becomes crucial. There are specific SEO proxies, such as data centers and residential proxies, that help you stand out from the crowd.
With residential proxies, carrying out keyword research and monitoring your competitor’s SEO becomes possible as it also requires web scraper. As a result, you can increase the ranking of your site. You can even incorporate the tactics and business strategies used by your competitors.
Moreover, proxies can also be used to monitor the performance of your site regularly.
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Web Scraping:
Let’s see how residential proxies assist you in web scraping.
Many protective websites detect user behavior throughout their surfing session. In case an unusual user behavior is detected, your IP address is blocked. It is where residential proxies come into the picture.
As mentioned earlier, residential proxies have several IP addresses. These IP addresses are rotated after scrapping a few pages. In this way, it becomes impossible for the webserver to block your IP address.
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Brand Monitoring:
Do you know that your competitors can defame your brand’s reputation if your brand advertisements are continuously blocked?
In this case, residential proxies come handy. They help in ad verification. They also allow you to detect and block suspicious ads. In this way, they improve your brand’s reputation through ad automation, email marketing, and social media campaigns.
So, now you know the benefits and uses of residential proxies. But how to choose residential proxies? What are all things to consider while purchasing residential proxies? These questions might be haunting you. Therefore, let’s have a look at them.
How to Choose a Residential Proxy Provider?
There are different factors that you should keep in mind while selecting a rotating residential proxy provider. Besides price, pool size and locations, authorization method, traffic, and reviews are some other parameters that you should take into consideration.
Let’s look at some of these factors in brief.
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Pool Size and Locations:
It’s better to choose a large pool of IP addresses than a small pool of IP addresses. The apparent reason for it is that large pools work with umpteen number of IP addresses from varied locations. It’s not the case with small pool size proxy providers.
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Reviews:
Always go with a residential proxy provider that has good reviews and customer ratings. Proxy providers with good reviews are more reliable.
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Traffic:
You should choose residential proxy providers with limited traffic over unlimited traffic. This is because unlimited traffic slows down the Internet speed. Hence, with limited traffic, the quality will not be compromised.
Conclusion
After reading the article, you must know how vital residential proxies protect your IP address from getting blocked.
Many times, you tend to operate a site from a different location. In such a case, a residential proxy lets you access it without any hassle.
Furthermore, residential proxies are great for brand monitoring, internet marketing, SEO monitoring, and web scraping.
So, buy a reliable residential proxy provider to ease access to the highly protected content on the web or to boost your online business. Remember to read customer reviews before purchasing one. Good Luck!