Web scraping, also known as web data collection, has grown in popularity as a method of collecting web data. While it is well known for its versatility and flexibility, this new technology has assisted many individuals and corporations retrieve large amounts of data from practically all websites or databases.
Web data collection is a technique for extracting massive amounts of data from selected websites to gather business insights, implement marketing plans, develop SEO strategies, or analyze the competition in the market.
A proxy is a third-party server that allows you to route your request through their servers while using their IP address. However, various forms of proxies are available on multiple web data platforms, including different proxy applications.
What Are The Various Forms Of Proxies?
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Residential proxies
These proxies provide private residence IP addresses and assist you in routing your requests through household networks. These are more difficult to obtain and more expensive. However, because target websites generally do not prohibit home IP addresses, they can provide additional benefits to enterprises. These IPs help you appear to be a genuine website visitor browsing a website.
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Datacenter proxies
Datacenter proxies, the most prevalent proxy, provide IP addresses of servers in data centers. Datacenter proxies are private or personal ones not affiliated with ISPs (ISPs). These IPs are inexpensive and can aid in developing an effective web crawling solution.
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Mobile proxies
These private mobile device IPs are challenging to get and retain lawfully. Due to the lack of effective proxy management skills, data centers and residential proxies produce similar results.
Web Data Collection Applications with Proxy Capabilities
An IP proxy works well for avoiding website blocks, and one easy method to use an IP proxy is to use web scraping tools that already include proxy functions, such as Octoparse. These tools can be used with IP proxies or IP proxy resources incorporated within the specific tools. Below are the various types of data collection applications with proxy functions:
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Parsehub
Parsehub is a visual web data platform application that supports IP rotation and cloud scraping. When you enable IP rotation for your projects, the proxies used to execute them come from various countries. You may also add your list of selected proxies to ParseHub as a portion of the rotation IP features if you want to view a website from a specific country or prefer to use your proxies rather than the ones it gives for IP rotation.
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Octoparse
Octoparse is a free and robust web scraping program that can scrape nearly any website. Its cloud-based data extraction uses a massive pool of cloud IP addresses, reducing the possibility of being blocked and protecting your local IP addresses. Octoparse 8.5 features numerous country-based IP pools, allowing you to efficiently scrape websites only available to IPs from a given region/country. While running the crawler on your local device, Octoparse will enable you to employ a list of proxies to prevent revealing your real IP address.
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Apify
Apify is a data collection tool that uses online scraping and automation. It provides not only data gathering services but also a proxy service to reduce web scraping blocking. Apify Proxy supports both datacenter and residential IP addresses. You can opt for an inexpensive and fast IP like Datacenter IPs. However, they may be blacklisted by target sites. Residential IP addresses are very costly and more difficult to block.
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Mozenda
Mozenda is also a user-friendly desktop data scraper. It provides users with the option of using geolocation proxies or custom proxies. Geolocation proxies allow you to redirect your crawler’s traffic through another area of the world to get information relevant to that region. When normal geolocation does not satisfy your project’s needs, you can use custom proxies to connect to proxies from a third-party supplier.
Why Use Proxies for Your Web Data Collection?
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It keeps your IP address safe
You may be banned if you do several scraping actions on a target site over a long period. Your access may be restricted in different ways due to your location. If you utilize a reputable proxy, you can solve these problems in the blink of an eye. Your IP address will be concealed and replaced with many rotating residential proxies, thus hiding you from the target website’s server. A proxy, on the other hand, will provide you with access to a global network of proxy servers, allowing you to avoid the problem of location. Choose your preferred location, such as the United States or Madagascar, and surf in complete anonymity.
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Avoid IP restrictions
Websites use crawl rate restrictions to prevent scrapers from submitting too many requests. As a result, the site’s speed has been lowered. If the proxy pool is large enough, the crawler can avoid rate limits on the target website by making queries from multiple IP addresses.
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It keeps a steady connection
You know that data collection takes time, regardless of your chosen application. Your internet connection falls just as you complete the process, causing you to lose all of your progress and waste valuable time. This could happen if you utilize your server, which may have a poor connection. If you use a reputable proxy, your connection will be more reliable.
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Security
Your server probably won’t be able to handle all the potentially dangerous things encountered while scraping data. Backconnect proxies are the most effective solution to this problem.
A proxy can assist you with specific fundamentals and requirements, such as disguising your IP address and using a secure and consistent connection to ensure that your operation runs smoothly and successfully, irrespective of the software you intend to use or your experience level.
How Does A Proxy Server For Web Scraping Work?Â
Websites typically block the IP addresses used to access them. On the other hand, using a proxy server is a fantastic solution because the server has its own IP address and can protect yours. A proxy pool enables you to scrape a website far more reliably and reduces the likelihood of your crawlers being blocked. Incorporate your proxy pool with a web data extraction tool to safeguard your web data from blocking issues.
Why Should Your Organization Utilize Proxies for Web Data Collection?
The central question will be why you must go through all of this to hide your company’s name. This is the truth. It’s a challenging market out there, and if you want to make serious development with your firm, you need this method desperately to beat your competitors. Apart from obtaining competitive analysis, there are various other ins and outs of why your business needs it.Â
It would help if you had quality leads to reach out to potential customers as a business. It is necessary to collect essential data for this reason. This is where ethical web scraping can help with lead generation. It gathers information from competing portals and forums to determine who is doing business with them. You can utilize this information to produce more qualified leads.
ConclusionÂ
Although using a proxy makes web data collection more effective, keeping the scraping speed under control is crucial and avoids overwhelming your target websites. Living in harmony with websites and not upsetting the equilibrium will allow you to obtain information constantly.
