Proxies keep growing in popularity, with individuals and businesses embracing them as some of the most beneficial tools in their digital arsenal.
Most people associate them with unlocking Netflix content to access the streaming giant’s massive library, but these server applications can do much more.
Here are the top reasons to use them and how to extract data from a website using a proxy.
What is a proxy?
A proxy is a server application that acts as an intermediary between a browser and the target website’s hosting server.
When you visit a website, your browser sends an HTTP request to one of the site’s hosting servers to allow you to view the content. The server sends an instant response, enabling you to access and interact with the site.
However, some websites have geo-restrictions preventing users from specific countries from accessing their content.
A proxy can bypass them by routing your traffic through one of its servers that virtually puts you in a different geographical location. It sends HTTP requests from another IP address, masking yours and avoiding IP bans.
Why are proxies so prevalent today?
Anonymous browsing and data security are the primary reasons people use proxies. Hiding your IP address prevents target websites from detecting your location, logging your browsing habits, and storing your connection information.
You can browse the web privately, hiding your identity and location. Some proxies can even prevent your ISP from monitoring your browsing history. They can see the websites you visit but not specific content. Others, like HTTPS proxies, will encrypt your traffic to enhance your data privacy and security.
Proxy servers also accelerate data transfers, helping you conserve bandwidth. They use caching to store the latest copies of frequently visited websites, significantly reducing HTTP requests and accelerating data retrieval.
If thousands of people visit one website using a particular proxy, it will send only one request, improving the network performance and conserving bandwidth.
As for sending multiple requests from one location, a rotating proxy will prevent an IP ban by changing an IP address for every HTTP request. That’s pretty beneficial for businesses relying on web scraping for market research.
Top 5 uses cases of proxies
The benefits above have opened the doors to many possibilities. Here are the top use cases of proxy servers.
Bypassing geo-restrictions
Every proxy has a broad server network, making it possible to choose a location to access a specific geo-restricted website.
It doesn’t require any technical know-how. You copy and paste the target URL into the appropriate box, select a server in that website’s location, and unlock the content instantly.
Bypassing geo-restrictions with a proxy is perfect if you wish to research competitors, consumers, and potential business partners in a particular country. It’s also ideal for sneaker copping as it reduces the block risk and lets you buy multiple limited-edition kicks.
Enhancing security
Not every proxy uses encryption, so check before utilizing one. However, some can protect your data against cybersecurity threats.
For instance, reverse proxies can protect your website against DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, making any potential attacker hit a virtual wall instead. SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) proxies can detect and block phishing emails, protecting you against malicious attacks.
Combining your proxy with a VPN will add an extra security layer, encrypting your internet connection and keeping potential hackers at bay.
Controlling employee internet usage
A transparent proxy is an ideal solution to control the websites your employees access during work hours. It can keep their productivity and efficiency high by blocking access to social media, for instance, while they’re at work.
Your administrators can also monitor the devices accessing the internal network running on a proxy server to detect and prevent potential data leaks, breaches, and illegal activities.
Improving SEO strategies
Monitoring your competitors and keyword trends is crucial to stay up to date with the trends and improve your content and services. However, visiting target websites repeatedly to access the latest information can result in a temporary or permanent IP block.
SEO or search engine proxies can help you conduct keyword research and competitive analysis to gather information necessary to improve your website’s ranking. You can also discover quality backlinks to include in your content.
Conducting market research
Since proxies can unblock restricted websites, reduce HTTP requests, and prevent IP bans, they’re ideal for market research.
You can access and extract data from any website to compare and optimize prices, gain sales intelligence, and accurately predict market trends.
How to extract data from a website? By using a web scraper or a web scraping API.
Web scraping tools and APIs can harvest high data volumes in seconds, helping you collect information from all or specific pages on a website.
When extracting data from websites, a proxy is your best friend because it bypasses IP blocks and other anti-scraping techniques. If you’re interested in extracting data from websites, view this link to learn more about data extraction.
Conclusion
Proxies are excellent tools for accessing restricted content, enhancing your online security, and monitoring various markets.
However, be wary of free proxies because they don’t use HTTPS and may contain malware, monitor your connection, analyze your traffic, and steal sensitive data.
