It is becoming difficult to stay competitive and have the edge over your counterparts in today’s business environment. A solution that several companies and agencies have turned to is web scraping. It is used to collect valuable data from websites to gain a competitive advantage.
However, not everyone is a fan or supporter of web scraping, and as a result, some countermeasures exist to prevent this method of data collection. For example, many well-known websites choose to block suspicious-looking IP addresses, which makes the web scraping process more challenging.
One solution to this countermeasure is the use of mobile proxies. They enable businesses to safely and securely extract required data without fear of being blocked by the website.
How do they accomplish this? Well, to put it simply, mobile proxies work by rotating IP addresses using several mobile devices, hence the name, connected to 3G or 4G cellular networks. These devices are then used to redirect traffic, making it difficult to find the masked IP address.
Furthermore, these steps improve privacy, security, and anonymity, all of which are desirable qualities to have when using the internet.
Now that we are a little closer to understanding what proxies are let’s look at their many uses. For that, we will use The Social Proxy, one of the best proxy providers out there.
Use Cases
Some of the use cases of The Social Proxy are:
- SEO monitoring
- eCommerce
- Marketing Management
- Web Data Extraction
- Quality Assurance
- Website Testing.
SEO monitoring
Why do companies use proxies to track SEO? Staying at the top of the search results list is a problem for many brands. SEO firms use a variety of strategies to help businesses stay ahead of the competition. You must update both of these services with new search engine intelligence data.
The 4G proxy network of Social Proxy is one of the fastest and most efficient. You’ll be able to see correct data in the geolocation you’re looking for when you use a real customer IP, even your private content that’s being misused.
Accuracy is critical for tracking rankings, checking website translations, local listings, or Google’s mobile-first index.
E-Commerce
You still may be wondering why you need a proxy for data collection?
One of the reasons is that when websites detect that competitors are attempting to visit their site, they may provide misleading information. This is quite hurtful for the visitor’s business, and they want to get the most accurate data possible.
Your anonymity will be preserved when using The Social Proxy’s 4G proxies to access limitless amounts of the most reliable data. The most significant advantage of using a proxy in this situation is that it does not block your account, but that is not all.
Collecting reliable pricing comparison data and market analysis is just as critical. Suppose you provide access to real user IPs. In that case, you will be recognized as a customer rather than a competitor, and you will be able to obtain reliable data for your marketing and sales studies.
Pricing varies widely between sites and countries, making digital e-commerce a fluid environment. E-commerce sites are notoriously tough to target, and picking a suitable proxy is crucial to determining if you can meet your goals online.
These are the vendors to go to if you want to scrape data for pricing analysis or market research or if you want to manage accounts.
Marketing Management
Ad fraud, such as phony clicks, bogus views, and unlawful advertisements, may affect any organization that advertises online. Fraud is an increasingly profitable trend that is difficult to eliminate from campaigns.
Furthermore, fraud efforts account for 20% to 35% of all ad impressions, representing a large number of impressions lost to fraudsters and a considerable number of clients who are not exposed to valuable inventory. You can easily face these challenges thanks to The Social Proxy.
Thanks to the rotating IP proxy network, you can also freely study the internet and make the best decision for your business.
Web Data Extraction
Today, businesses require lots of data that was until recently easily available to them to stay competitive and provide consumers with the best possible items or prices.
To acquire this data, almost every firm participates in data collection. They concentrate on gathering the most reliable data vital to their company’s growth. For example, web data extraction can include:
- Obtaining price information from databases.
- Scanning public records for legal information.
- Scraping social media for personal information.
Unfortunately, you can no longer collect the data you need, thanks to today’s growing usage of personalization-based smart technologies. To obtain the correct form of data for your company, you need to be able to access the internet unobstructed and such that you appear to be an average user.
This is where proxies come in, masking your IP and making you harder to detect using the abovementioned methods.
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance is one of the key components in any production cycle, from essential home appliances to high-quality websites. Any method for determining whether a product or service meets specified criteria is referred to as a process.
Personalization is one of the essential aspects of the modern internet, as it improves the quality of any website from the user’s perspective. So, how can you be sure your website will be of top quality, no matter where the user is? Well, this is another problem solved by mobile proxies.
Thanks to the Social Proxy’s rapid IP proxy network, you may freely acquire real-time data or online information vital to the company’s performance and development and never be blacklisted.
Website Testing
You, as a businesses owner, want your consumers to be able to enjoy your website no matter where they are. You put in a lot of hard work to design for various languages, cultures, and currencies, but you never know how the final result will turn out. Before publishing your website to the rest of the world, it is best to test it locally.
Testing on your local PC may be tricky. The information on most websites considers a user’s location to modify the content and the advertisements and data provided by third parties. That is where proxies come into play.
Using The Social Proxy, you can see how your website would appear to users from different parts of the globe and be confident in your test results.
These are just some of the use cases for mobile proxies. The Social Proxy has a thorough list of the best-fit use cases if you are interested in checking it out.
Dashboard
The Social Proxy’s Dashboard is very straightforward and contains all of the relevant info at a glance. You get an overview of your billing status, how many purchases you have made, and the number of support tickets you have created. Below that, you can see a quick list of all of your proxies, with their relevant information.
The next tab, 4G/LTE Proxies, contains a more detailed insight into your 4G proxies and their parameters. Clicking on it will lead you to all of the info regarding your subscription, like its status, active or not, when the next payment date is, how much the subscription is, and other payment-related details.
You can see the host, port number, username, password, and region. Also, you will be able to see when your subscription will expire and your subscription number.
Finally, the Rotate interval selector allows you to select how often you want the IP addresses rotated automatically, from every 3 minutes up to every 24 hours. You can do it manually by clicking on the corresponding “Rotate” button.
The following tab, API Swagger, will be of particular interest to developers. It allows you to make API calls in 6 different programming languages. These API calls can be used for many other things, from listing out your active proxies, rotating them to canceling your subscription, or even purchasing a proxy, all using the API calls.
All you need to do is select the desired language in the top right section, and the page will update with clear instructions and code bits that correspond to various functions. Besides that, you can generate and remove API keys from this panel.
Media Tools panel
The next panel is the Media Tools panel, which provides an overview of everything related to social media and automation. First and foremost, we give a Media Login Panel that enables you to quickly onboard new clients into your agency.
Another handy tool is the Down Detector. As its name implies, the tool’s job is to notify you whenever Instagram encounters issues or if it goes down. If something like that happens, you will be notified promptly via email, giving you time to make all of the necessary decisions and take steps to ensure the safety of your account and business.
Additional and included in the subscription price is the chance to have a 15-minute meeting once a month with one of their automation experts. According to The Social Proxy, their automation experts are very experienced with crawling, web scraping, automation, and social media.
The Social Proxy currently offers five different proxy locations: Austria, Germany, Israel, the UK, and the US. All of the proxies offer unlimited connection and privacy, allow for usage of multiple carriers, and include support for IP rotation and the API.
The IPs are the ones that even real users use, so the chance of being blocked is almost nonexistent. Another thing all of the five plans have in common is the price. These proxy plans are 90 EUR per month on a subscription-based model.
Conclusion
We hope you now understand the usefulness of mobile proxies for any business that relies on traditional online and social media marketing. With mobile proxies, you can again utilize web scraping to acquire valuable data that can help make all the right choices for your business.
The key is to pick a fast and trustworthy mobile proxy, like The Social Proxy. If you are still unsure, they offer a trial period to check out all of their options and make an informed decision.