When it comes to web scraping, using a proxy server is the best practice because it prevents you from being banned on the website you are scraping, but you must test your proxy to know whether its proxies are reliable or not.
Web scrapers use proxies to prevent being banned by masking their original IP address. If your proxy fails, either you will be blocked by the website owner or restricted by the country’s cyber laws. Another factor is to test your proxy’s speed because a slow proxy slows down your web scraping.
It’s advisable to test the proxies with best proxy tools to ensure that they are functioning efficiently. There are a plethora of online and offline tools to test the proxies but, you must choose the one that suits you.
A proxy tester verifies the functionality, anonymity, and speed of the proxies. It also checks whether the proxy is active or dead, gets the location details and whether it is working or blocked. You can also check whether your proxy can be used on other websites or not.
Usually, proxies are set up in a browser where you can monitor the proxy activity. You should check the location of your proxy to find the host location. It is essential to check the location of the proxies as certain proxies claim to be hosted in a particular country but when you check them, it is different.
For example, if you need a proxy to access a US-only website, then, you cannot use a Canadian, UK, or any other country’s proxy. You need a US proxy with a US IP address and this applies to the proxies in other countries.
You must test the proxies to check for their speed because when you share proxies with other users, they tend to be slower. This will bottleneck you if you are utilizing the proxy for web scraping purposes.
Finally, you must test its uptime because your proxy might be in your location and performing well, but it might go offline while you are performing some tasks and reveal your IP address.
Most proxies will claim to have 99% uptime but you need to check them to confirm it.
There are a variety of proxies based on their purpose and functionality. A simple test on a proxy is to test whether your proxy is working or not.
You may use online tools to check whether your proxy is working or not and this article covers some of the best proxy testers in 2023.
Check out the top proxies in the market and understand why they are unique.
This tool also helps you test the rotating proxies that keep changing their IP addresses for every new connection. In contrast to a rotating proxy that changes its IP address, sticky proxies have an IP address for a longer duration.
Another benefit of using this tool is that you can check more proxies at the same time through the multiprocessing technique.
Some of its salient features include testing proxies that use HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS protocols automatically.
As with any other proxy testing tool, hidemy.name checks for speed of the proxy and anonymity. It can ping any website and return the round trip time, information on packet loss, and a summary of the ping test.
The speed of its testing is fast because it is designed with smart algorithms to recognize the proxies in the list and makes use of threads to test them at the same time.
Hidemy. name streams result in flexible settings so you can export only the information you need.
You may also choose the anonymity level from high, average, low, and no anonymity based on your requirement but it is advisable to pick proxies with high anonymity levels from the proxy list. Proxies that use high anonymity levels are less likely to reveal your IP footprint.
It supports HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5. It has a real-time updating of the database which updates the proxy’s availability. And it offers full access to the proxy database for all its users.
This software can sort and filter by IP address, port number, protocols, and other parameters as well.
As proxies have a huge impact on the speed and performance of the scraping operations, it is necessary to check the efficiency of the proxies.
The ability to scrape huge data from various sites
Accessing the sites without revealing our identity.
Increases the speed of data communication.
Testing a proxy usually means checking if a proxy is working or not. Web servers or Internet Service Providers may get suspicious about the IP address and block those proxy addresses. Ensuring that a proxy address is active will help people to experience uninterrupted functioning.
Whether you purchase a proxy or make use of a free proxy, it’s always good to test it. Proxies are used in web scraping, SEO monitoring, Ecommerce, Website Testing, Cybersecurity, Ad verification, and Brand protection, so knowing how to test them is vital.
You need anonymity in the case of web scraping and conducting large-scale SEO campaigns. In such situations, we recommend ProxyScrape’s services because it provides reliable proxies and a wide spectrum of services such as Proxy Filter, online proxy checker, and other APIs.
Keep checking into our resources to learn more about proxies, their types, and web scraping.