Individuals and companies use proxies for many reasons. These include accessing geo-restricted content, gathering public data online, and managing multiple social media accounts, to name a few. Depending on the case, users choose a proxy type the most suitable for their needs.
One of the most popular proxy types is residential proxies. These proxies are IP addresses assigned by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Residential IPs are used by all regular internet users, and they contain various information about the device connected to the internet, such as location.
Proxies work as an intermediary between the end user and the website they’re targeting. Each request sent by the user goes through a proxy server, which shields the user’s original IP address and replaces it with a proxy IP. Hence, using a residential proxy service means replacing the actual IP address with a residential IP, which looks like a regular user’s IP to the target website.
So what use cases are the most popular for residential proxies?
Web Scraping
Some call data the gold of our times, and the internet is the largest goldmine. Every single day users add around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data and this number rapidly grows. To make this data useful, it has to be collected. And this is where web scraping steps in.
Gathering online data enables companies to build new products, follow current trends and forecast future changes. Businesses make informed decisions and develop their strategies based on the data gathered from the internet.
Residential proxies play an essential role in web scraping. Collecting large volumes of data would be impossible without proxies because they make the process much quicker and more efficient. Companies turn to residential proxy services to get IP addresses that are assigned by ISPs because these proxies have the lowest block rates.
Price Monitoring
Monitoring prices is a common practice for various e-commerce marketplaces. Market price monitoring enables companies to stay on top of pricing trends by setting competitive prices for various items they sell.
A residential proxy service helps businesses monitor prices because proxies enable accessing competitor sites from various locations. For example, connecting to the target website via a residential IP from Canada allows companies to see competitor prices set for that specific market. This enables businesses to get a broad overview of the market and make strategic decisions.
Residential proxies offer a much wider selection of locations than other types of proxies. For example, datacenter proxies only cover areas where data centers are located, while residential IPs can come even from the most remote countries. That’s why companies prefer residential proxies for market price monitoring.
Sneaker Copping
Limited edition sneakers are a very popular item. Sneakerheads pay incredible amounts of money for limited-release shoes, and getting those sneakers is very hard.
Companies launch limited-time sneaker drops, where only the fastest buyers can get the shoes. With the competition so high, users employ sneaker bots that can automatically fill out billing information much faster than any human could.
Sneaker bots are mainly run by residential proxies because these IPs are much harder to block. Residential proxies appear as regular user IP addresses, and target sites don’t want to block their clients. Although datacenter proxies are faster than residential ones, they’re also much more likely to get banned before even making it to the checkout.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Optimizing a site for search engines means more traffic and more sales. That’s why website owners do their best to make sure their content ranks at the top of search engine result pages. The SEO process contains many elements, such as keyword research, competitor monitoring, auditing internal sites, etc.
These tasks may require different types of proxies, but residential proxy service is generally the best choice for SEO. Search engines have robust anti-bot measures in place, and they can easily recognize traffic coming from datacenter proxies and block it. That’s why residential IPs are much more effective when it comes to SEO.
Residential proxies appear as regular search engine users and can perform various automated tasks uninterrupted.
Social Media Management
Managing multiple social media accounts requires proxies, as some of the most popular social networks limit the number of accounts that can be run on one IP address. Various marketing companies need to access multiple accounts from the same device, and this is where they turn to a residential proxy service for help.
Residential IPs are the best choice for running multiple accounts on social networks because these proxies appear as regular IPs. Managing social accounts with datacenter proxies will get the profiles suspended in no time because the networks will recognize datacenter IPs and flag them as suspicious.
Rotating residential proxies enables keeping the same IP address for a set time interval, which is a helpful feature for social media account management. Users can keep the same IP to run their automated tasks on one account and then change the IP to manage another account. This can help against getting the accounts suspended.
Conclusion
Residential proxies have many use cases where they perform better than any other type of proxies. The best residential IP use case studies involve web scraping, price monitoring, sneaker copping, search engine optimization, and social media management.
In all these case studies, users benefit from various residential proxy features, such as a wide selection of locations, high success rates, and rotation. Companies and individuals looking for proxy services for these use cases should consider getting residential proxies.