Web scraping uses proxies to gather data for analysis, comparison, research, etc. Web scrapers spend time on competitors’ websites to scrape details like their prices to find their competitive edge, but the competitor website might block the proxy if it uses the same IP address for a prolonged period.
There are several techniques to prevent proxy blocking. Rotating proxies are one of the most recent and sophisticated proxies to prevent proxy blocking. These proxies collect massive data on the internet, provide security, and bypass security controls to scrape data without getting blocked by the competitor’s website.
This article discusses a rotating proxy, how it works, and its benefits.
Feel free to jump to any section to learn more about how to rotate proxies!
A rotating proxy is a proxy server that assigns a new IP address for every new connection from a proxy pool. Rotating IPs have a lower chance of getting blocked due to their rotating nature. The service provider assigns fresh IP addresses from its vast pool of IP addresses at regular intervals. The IPs change to avoid the risk of getting blocked.
Web Scraping is extensive and requires proxies for anonymity and automation. There are plenty of proxies available in the market and you must choose the one that serves your purpose.
Proxies are categorized into residential proxies and data center proxies.
A rotating proxy is a residential proxy that masks the original IP address and assigns a new IP address with every request from the user. A residential proxy is an intermediate proxy server that provides traceable IP addresses to a location in a network. The Internet Service Provider (ISP) registers the IP addresses of all its connected devices in a public database. The database contains information about the browser and the cookies of the devices connected through the ISP.
The residential proxy has two based on how long it holds onto the IP address:
The static residential proxy allows you to use an IP address for a duration, so you can set the timing for how long you wish to use the same proxy. The static residential proxy allows you to use the same proxy without changing the IP address.
Since it does not change the IP address, it is also called a sticky IP address.
The rotating residential proxy changes or rotates the IP address every time there is a request from the user. These proxies connect to the target website while storing the real IP address in a database run by the residential proxy.
For every new request from a user, the proxy allows a new IP address from the pool of IPs and websites have a hard time detecting or blocking the proxy as it changes the IP address frequently.
Rotating proxies are best when you use proxies to scrape the website and wish to remain anonymous and unblocked.
Data Center proxies are not attached to an ISP and are offered by another service provider, usually a cloud provider. These proxies are designed for fast connections and to support high bandwidth.
Datacenter proxies have a large pool of shared proxies to use and dispose of rapidly. They make the best choice for web scraping because they are less likely to get detected.
The Internet Service Provider(ISP) provides a connection between the user and the server. The ISP has a pool of IP addresses and provides a new IP address when a proxy makes a new connection.
The ISPs have more IP addresses than the users connected to them, and it distributes the next available IP address for the proxy to connect. When a user disconnects, it takes the IP address and puts it back in the pool for the next user.
You can send concurrent connection requests; for each request, the server will rotate IPs from the pool.
Users can also set how often they want to rotate the addresses with a sticky session or sticky IP if they want to use the same IP address until they complete a task. A sticky session will maintain the proxy with the same IP address until the work is done.
What makes the rotating proxy attractive is the feature of allocating new IP addresses each time the proxy connects with the server, and it comes with many advantages.
Rotating proxies provide full access to its pool of IP addresses that change periodically. It assigns new IP addresses to the proxies at regular intervals, it is hard to detect and protects you from IP address blocking or IP banning.
IP banning is when the network service blocks your IP or the subnet when the proxy spends too much time scraping a website.
Online business has replaced the traditional conduct of business and technologies help businesses to reach their markets from a wider perspective.
Due to globalization, products and services have price variations based on their location. For instance, service or software costs $100 in the United States, $150 in France, and $117 in Singapore. However, you cannot purchase these services due to some geolocation restrictions.
Using a residential rotating proxy, you can access these services using the restricted location’s proxy IP address.
Rotating proxies can access competitors’ websites and compare the prices in different locations. Rotating proxies scrape through the competitor’s website to do price research without getting blocked. Comparing the price with the competitor’s website is crucial in marketing as you need to have a price that is not too high or too low, as it might affect your marketing efforts.
Competitor research plays an important role in a business’s SEO strategies. Understanding your business’s strengths and weaknesses is difficult if you don’t compare your competitor’s metrics. Competitor research helps you realise gaps in strategies that your business can fill.
To do comprehensive competitive research, you must crawl through the competitor’s website. You must check their content, keywords, and tags that help them to rank on Google, which means you must move from page to page and extract data over a long time.
If you use a single IP address proxy, the website might get suspicious and block you, but with a reliable proxy for browsing, you can extract the data without any worries. Rotating proxies extract data that will help you improve your lead generation strategies and increase conversions.
It is difficult for anyone to track your IP addresses when you use a rotating proxy as they have to change IP addresses, it shields your system from cyberattacks, and no one may detect your browsing habits.
Even if someone has access to your computer’s IP address, it’s difficult for them to trace the proxy’s activities back to you so the chances of exposing your original IP address to a third party are low.
A rotating proxy is greatly used in scraping, mining, and market research. A few examples are:
A dedicated datacenter proxy has several features, such as unlimited bandwidth and concurrent connections, dedicated HTTP proxies for easy communication, and IP authentication for more security. With 99.9% uptime, you can rest assured that the dedicated datacenter will always work during any session. Last but not least, ProxyScrape provides excellent customer service and will help you to resolve your issue within 24-48 business hours.
The other feature of ProxyScrape’s residential proxy is a rotating feature. A rotating proxy helps you avoid a permanent ban on your account because your residential proxy dynamically changes your IP address, making it difficult for the target server to check whether you are using a proxy or not.
Apart from that, the other features of a residential proxy are: unlimited bandwidth, along with concurrent connection, dedicated HTTP/s proxies, proxies at any time session because of 7 million plus proxies in the proxy pool, username and password authentication for more security, and last but not least, the ability to change the country server. You can select your desired server by appending the country code to the username authentication.
Next, the best thing would be to change the proxy server based on the country. You just have to append the country ISO_CODE at the end of the IP authentication or username and password authentication.
There are many proxy providers on the internet, and you must choose a rotating proxy that helps you to get your job done without issues. It must also provide you with a secured service by masking your IP address.
Your target website might have strict rules that hinder your work. But the changing IP addresses will allow you to stay unblocked until you complete the job.
