Four Reasons to Use Residential Proxies for Data Crawling

Four Reasons To Use Residential Proxies For Data Crawling 1
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Data is the gold to businesses, and most of it is on the internet. As of 2021, each person on Earth generates 1.7 MB of data per second. Company websites, eCommerce platforms, product pages, review sites, and social media are excellent sources of consumer data ripe for harvesting. Data crawling and scraping are retrieving texts from websites, and residential proxies are the best tools for the job.

What Is Data Crawling?

Data crawling is using tools to search the web to look for certain texts. It is like regular internet searches but goes deeper. Programmed web crawlers (sometimes referred to as spiders) use algorithms to follow specific instructions and follow various links to locate relevant passages.

Crawlers collect information as they go and seek additional links. Their work is more in-depth than regular searches because they find other relevant places and texts on the web. Web crawlers are often used in conjunction with web scrapers and rotating residential proxies.

Crawling locates data that can help marketing efforts and improve brand reputation.

What is Web Scraping?

Web crawling is the preliminary phase of web scraping, which is the actual retrieval of texts from websites. Crawling is like a reconnaissance phase of the mission. Web scraping involves a scraper tool that lifts the HTML code from the website, copies it, and stores the database’s information. This ranges from content scrapers to data scrapers or even more custom solutions like an aliexpress scraper.

Web scraping can be scaled with the right tools. It isn’t just a one-time venture to gather information, but web scraping is an ongoing activity. As social media pages and websites are updated, more web scraping is required to gather fresh information. Use scrapers that can lift many texts and be automated to make the task easier.

What Are Proxies?

Proxies are an essential tool for web crawling and scraping because they make it easier to anonymously do these tasks. This is important because if websites sense a visitor is crawling or scraping information on their site, they are likely to block the user. This means that all of the text on the site will be unavailable.

Proxies are growing in popularity, and according to Statista, 26% of people worldwide use them regularly. Proxies, which are also called proxy servers, are servers that are like a go-between that conceals the user’s IP address from the website. Instead, a proxy reveals an alternate IP address to the website. This conceals the user’s IP address and makes the user’s own address invisible. It prevents the user from getting blocked by crawling and scraping.

What Are Residential Proxies?

There are many proxies to choose from, but for web crawling and scraping, residential proxies are the best because they can prevent detection. Residential proxies are the most convincing decoy of a regular user because internet service providers issue them. Therefore, their IP addresses look like those of regular users and do not seem like proxies.

There are plenty of other reasons to use residential proxies for scraping:

Four Reasons To Use Residential Proxies For Data Crawling 2

More Locations and More IPs

Rotating residential proxies offer numerous locations and IP addresses. A large number of proxies are not connected to a specific address or just one. Rotating residential proxies is important because if too much activity on a website comes from one IP address, that address will be flagged. If the addresses keep rotating, then it is hard to single out a specific IP.

A good rotating residential IP should transition smoothly between IPs without interrupting service. Having several IPs and location choices can open access to geo-restricted content and make crawling and scraping tasks go smoothly.

Unlockable, Real User IPs

Websites don’t like crawling and scraping. This is not because there is anything illegal or unethical about these processes. As long as one is crawling for readily available information, there is nothing ostensibly wrong with it. Website owners are naturally nervous about competitors crawling their sites for market research, and this is why they discourage crawling.

As a result, many website owners have gotten wise about how to detect proxies. Datacenter proxies may be cheaper, but they are more vulnerable to blocking because they are not connected to a specific address. However, residential proxies have IP addresses that resemble regular IP and prevent blocking.

Built-In IP Rotation

If a single IP takes too many actions on a website, that could raise a red flag. This means that residential IPs that have rotating IPs are the best way to avoid being banned. This rotation should happen automatically and smoothly, so crawling and scraping are not interrupted. A good residential proxy will rotate IPs at regular intervals and will remain undetected by sites.

Most websites limit visitors to 10 actions per minute. Web crawling and scraping requires many actions that can exceed these limits. With residential rotating proxies, you can enjoy smooth web scraping and retrieve the data you need.

They Make Crawling Faster

Using multiple residential proxies or rotating residential proxies, it is possible to scale crawling and crawl faster. These efforts can be combined and coordinated efficiently with higher quality residential proxies. There is no limit to how many residential proxies can be used since the IP addresses are not connected to a single user.

One way residential proxies can make tasks faster and easier is the fact that the IP addressed rotate. Websites do not want to allow one visitor to do too many actions. They may limit a visitor to ten actions per visit. When using a rotating residential proxy, each IP takes just a few actions, and the service will not slow down as the IP reaches its limit.

More Efficient Web Crawling with Residential Proxies

Retrieving data from the internet is essential for marketing efforts and product research. Since the number of texts online are almost infinite, the best-automated tools are needed for crawling and scraping. Rotating residential proxies makes it easier to anonymously perform these tasks and secure the data that can fuel your business strategy.

 

Thank you for reading!