What Are Residential Proxies And Why Do You Need Them?

A proxy is crucial for a better data collection. Learn how Rotating Residential Proxies can help you maintain your competitive advantage
7 min read
what is a residential proxy

Residential proxies allow you to choose a specific location (country, city, or mobile carrier) and surf the web as a real user in that area. Proxies can be defined as intermediaries that protect users from general web traffic. They act as buffers while also concealing your IP address. Proxies are alternative IP addresses assigned to users by the provider.

All the user’s search requests are channeled via the proxy IP to the proxy server and then to the resource server. This way, the user’s activity is concealed and their identity remains anonymous.

How residential proxies work

Residential proxies essentially route your internet traffic through an intermediary server. The proxy server assigns you an alternative IP address through which all of your server requests are channeled.

Note that the alternative IP address assigned belongs to a real device. When you make a search request, it is conveyed to the resource server via your residential proxy. This way, your real IP is concealed, and sites perceive your activity as that of any other regular user.

Depending on the provider, an ideal residential proxy package affords the option of targeting countries, cities and all requests should be HTTPS encrypted for security.

So, what are some uses of residential proxies?

Residential IPs are genuine and more trustworthy compared to other types of proxies. Depending on your browsing needs, one can use residential proxies for different purposes. Here are some uses of residential proxies that you may want to consider.

using proxy network for ad verification

Ad verification

This is a very common use of residential proxies as they provide the means of checking and verifying ads displayed on your pages allowing you to recognize and block suspicious ads. Without adequate AD verification, your competitors may use devious means to damage your brand reputation.

It is advisable to choose a residential proxy provider that is very easy to use. The right platform should enable you to choose residential or mobile IPs for accurate ad tracking, media monitoring, and content compliance. All these are reasons to consider residential IPs for your ad verification.

Web scraping with the help of proxy network IPs

Web scraping

Internet marketing goes far beyond casual ads and social media posts. You’ve got to study your competitors and learn their ways. The best way to access your competitor’s info is by using a web scraper. Web scraping with residential proxies is possible because they support mass scraping by allowing you to continuously rotate the IPs.

It is important to note that datacenter proxies can also be used for web scraping. However, they are best suited for use on a much smaller scale. If you want to do large-scale scraping on Google, LinkedIn, and other giant sites, residential proxies are the best.

Price monitoring in local markets using proxy IPs

Market price monitoring

To keep your clients coming, it is necessary to monitor and comply with the market pricing trends. You don’t want to overprice your products and scare away potential clients or underprice and have customers doubt the quality. With residential proxies, you will be able to leverage sales intelligence tools to give you timely market price updates.
The data gathered by your sales intelligence software should be analyzed appropriately.

If not done appropriately, you are likely to end up with the wrong pricing information, which can be very damaging to your business sales efforts. Overall, residential proxies make it possible for you to use different sales intelligence software. With that info, it is possible to do price monitoring, comparison, and analysis to come up with an acceptable price for your products.

Proxy IPs for buying sneakers

Accessing sneaker sites

Shoe sites are often tightly monitored. This is because of identity theft, design copying, and purchase limitations that are rife in the industry. Even so, it is still possible to access all the information you may require from these sites. Residential proxies provide ad verification in an excellent way to access sneaker sites. Sneaker proxies are overrated.

In truth, sneaker proxies can be data center IP proxies. However, with your shoe bots, sneaker proxies are still blocked by sites like Nike, EastBay, and Supreme Shoes. The way to get around this problem is by using residential proxies. They are trusted and less prone to blacklisting by popular shoe sites.

Proxy networks for buying tickets online

Accessing ticket sites

When it comes to scraping ticket sites, there’s no better way than using residential proxies. They will grant the access you need to easily compare ticket prices across different providers.

Many different ticket proxies are available. The problem with these is that they are mostly data center proxies. Datacenter IPs are easy to identify, and ticket sites easily notice and ban users of these IPs. Most sites trust residential proxies, ticket sites included. Use them to access all the information you want from different ticket providers.

Internet Marketing

Internet marketing

This is a comprehensive platform. Site owners are always looking for ways to get ahead of their competitors. In such competitive settings, the best way to survive is by studying the ways of your competitors. Harness the power and potential of residential proxies to maximize your marketing potential. Make use of ad automation, social media campaigns, and email automation to improve your market reach.

Proxy networks for Search Engine Optimization, SEO

SEO content compliance

Residential proxies support different SEO tools. The platform supports a whole lot of tools besides Scrapebox and Xrumer. Appropriate onsite SEO improves your site’s traffic and leads. By scraping competitor sites, you get information about their keywords and sources of traffic.

You can also tweak your site’s content to support multiple languages. Link building to and from an authority site is also crucial. With the right tools, the residential proxy platform allows you to create meaningful links for your website to flourish. You also get to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of previous links. There are different audit and crawling tools you can use for such tasks, allowing you to optimize your site to improve its performance.

Proxy networks for Social Media monitoring

Social media management

There’s no second-guessing the power of social media in modern web marketing. With residential proxies, it is now possible to create multiple social media accounts and manage them seamlessly.

What to consider before buying residential proxies

  • Budget
    Residential proxies are often very expensive. Nevertheless, you can always find a better deal. All you need to do is compare prices between providers.
  • Purpose and use
    Why do you need residential proxies? This is a very pertinent question. If it is for basic security and small scale scraping, then think again. Maybe you don’t need residential proxies. Datacenter proxies might as well be what you need. On the other hand, if you want a proxy package for large-scale scraping, anonymity, and security, then you need residential proxies.
    Always strive to know why you need residential proxies. It is not prudent to spend so much when maybe you could do just fine with a cheap shared proxy package. This also applies when buying different residential proxy packages.
  • Compatibility with automation tools
    Such as for SEO, if you are into this for site optimization, then you better check and confirm that the residential proxy package supports SEO tools. Be sure to verify that prior to purchasing.
  • Site unlocking
    Residential proxies make it possible to stream content from geo-restricted sites without ever being blocked or flagged. Some providers may have blocked IPs. Check and verify the package before making a payment.

That is it for this round-up of residential proxies. This post is meant to help you understand residential proxies and why you need them.