What Is a Proxy and Why Is It Essential for Web Scraping

Many internet users take advantage of proxies to have an anonymous and less restricted web experience. Proxies separate web users from the websites they access and act as intermediary servers.

One of the main applications of proxy servers is facilitating the web scraping process. Basically, web scraping is the extraction of data from websites and web applications, and with all the anti-scraping security measures in websites, using a proxy is essential.

What is a Proxy?

A proxy is an intermediary server that sits between internet users and servers and connects them indirectly. Basically, when a user sends a request for information, it first goes to the proxy server, and then the proxy server asks for the information on behalf of the user. Many clients use proxy servers to hide their IP address, access restricted content, or programmatically extract data from websites.

When using reliable proxy servers, the target website or server can’t access the IP address of the user and recognizes the proxy’s IP address as the client. After receiving the data, the proxy sends it to the user. 

So, during the whole process, there are no direct connections between the user and the target web server. As a result, a proxy can provide users with anonymity.

Types of Proxies

There are many types of proxies available, but not all of them work the same way. To choose the best proxy servers for your needs, you should make yourself familiar with different types of proxies:

• Residential Proxies: These proxies use IP addresses that are assigned to real residential devices. Therefore, residential proxies are great choices for web scraping of protected websites because they are difficult to block and seem like a legitimate direct connection. On the other hand, they are expensive and slow because they are based on residential connections.
• Datacenter Proxies: As the name suggests, these proxy servers are provided by data centers. They are relatively cheap and high-speed, but certain websites can easily block them. Therefore, taking advantage of Datacenter proxies is a suitable approach for bulk data extraction and web scraping of unprotected websites.
• ISP Proxies: These proxies are hosted on data center servers, but the IP addresses are assigned by ISPs. So, they are something between a residential and Datacenter proxy server. ISP proxies are quite reliable and fast, but they are more expensive and limited than datacenter proxies. We recommend using the ISP proxies for analyzing data and social media management.
• Rotating Proxies: If you want to minimize the risk of IP bans by websites, Rotating Proxies are the best choice. These proxies constantly change the IP address to provide constant access to the web servers. The cost is higher, and managing the sessions could be irritating, but it is a great option for data mining and monitoring. Try the Rotating proxies to overcome the anti-bot measures and remain anonymous.
• Mobile Proxies: Using IP addresses assigned to mobile devices, mobile proxies are one of the best options for anonymity and remaining undetected while scraping data from mobile apps, mobile specific content and mimicking mobile device traffic. However, please note that mobile proxies are expensive compared to the residential or datacenter proxies. Use reputable mobile proxies for better speed and overall performance as it is slower than other proxy by nature.

How Proxy Work?

Proxy servers use different IP addresses to mask the user’s actual IP address. This makes it very difficult for web servers to find the IP address of the real user. Some proxies, while using different IP addresses, introduce themselves to the web servers as proxies. So, some websites may block anyone who uses proxies. However, there are more advanced proxies that act as real users and use different techniques to encrypt the data circulating between the user and the web server.

Here are the typical steps of how a proxy server handles requests and responses:

1. When using the Internet while the proxy is active, users actually send their web requests to the proxy server. For example, when a user clicks on a link, the request to visit the website first goes to the proxy.
2. Then, the proxy receives the request from the user and might change some data for anonymity purposes.
3. Next, the proxy server forwards the user’s request to the target web server.
4. The web server receives the request from the proxy server and processes it. In this step, the web server sees the proxy server’s IP address instead of the actual client requesting the information.
5. The web server sends the response back to the proxy server.
6. Lastly, the proxy receives the response and sends it back to the user.

Proxies using HTTP technology do not employ encryption to send information between the user and web server, but they are generally fast and easy to use. If you want more security when browsing or extracting data from the web, an HTTPS proxy would be a great pick. 

HTTPS proxies use TLS protocols and encrypt the data in steps 2, 3, and 6 to maximize the privacy and security of the requests and responses. Also, there are proxies using SOCKS encrypted technology that support a wide range of protocols and are more flexible for various purposes like file transferring, browsing, and data gathering.

Why is Proxy Essential for Web Scraping?

Web scraping is the automated process of extracting structured and unstructured data from websites. It involves using software tools, known as web scrapers, to systematically gather information from web pages. These scrapers can be custom-built using various programming languages like Python or JavaScript, or they can utilize existing frameworks and libraries specifically designed for web scraping tasks.

The common usage of using web scraping is to compare price, do market research, monitor competition and SEO.

Challenges in Web Scraping

Web scraping is not as easy as just installing a few automated tools to do the work for you. Many website’s firewall will block the automated bots and prevent the web scraping process as larger requests will be considered as DDoS attack or malicious requests.

One of the ways websites try to protect themselves from web scraping and constant data collecting is by blocking IPs. To do this, websites implement rate limiting, which is essentially a counter to requests coming from the same IP. If it reaches the threshold, the IP will be banned or limited.

CAPTCHA is another tool that websites often utilize, and they can be very challenging for web scraping. These are simply puzzles that are designed to be solved by humans and filter out the bots. Also, geo-restriction measures can be a headache if you are trying to extract info from some websites that are only available in certain countries. Some websites even go further and use complex anti-scraping tools to identify scrapers.

How Proxy Solves Web Scraping Challenges

Proxies are essential for web scraping, as they are designed to bypass the obstacles and smoothen the path for automated tools. Proxies can rotate between IP addresses to avoid detection, or use residential and mobile proxies to appear as regular users. So, using reliable proxies, you can significantly lower the chance of being IP banned and bypass the rate limits of certain websites. Let’s assume that a marketing firm wants to scrape information from various websites to get a clear view of trends in the market. Using a proxy with IP rotation capabilities will facilitate the process immensely.  

To access geo-restricted content, some proxies use IP addresses from certain locations to appear as a user who has sent the request from an authorized country. Also, using encryption protocols, advanced proxy servers hide the real location and identity of the user. For example, if you live in the US and want to collect data from a Chinese website that is only available in China, using a proxy with a Chinese IP address is your best bet.

Solving CAPTCHA is one of the best applications for proxy servers. This can be done in a few different ways, but most proxies use machine learning technologies to solve text-based and image-based CAPTCHA. In addition to this, some proxies use headless browsers to interact with JavaScript and various dynamic content and solve more challenging CAPTCHA puzzles. For example, if you want to gather the prices of many items on eBay in a limited time, without a proxy equipped with CAPTCHA-solving technologies, the probability of getting the job done in time will be minimal.

When web scraping European websites, it’s crucial to comply with cookie consent regulations like GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive. These regulations mandate that websites obtain explicit user consent before storing cookies. Automating cookie acceptance is often necessary for efficient web scraping, but it can be challenging. Websites use various consent mechanisms, ranging from simple banners to complex third-party Consent Management Platforms (CMPs). Some CMPs even implement security measures to detect and block automated requests.

Using proxies can help by rotating IP addresses and masking the scraper’s identity, making it harder for websites and CMPs to identify automated activity.

What are the Benefits of Using Proxy Beside Web Scraping?

Proxies are not used only for web scraping purposes. There are many applications for different kinds of proxy servers, including research, monitoring, content filtering, and more. Here are the most important benefits of proxy servers besides web scraping:

• Market Research: Proxy users can access geo-restricted websites and markets to research the trends, the interests of the audience, and the competitor’s advantages and disadvantages without using web scrapers or bots. 
• Content Filtering: Workspaces, schools, or parents can use proxies to control the content accessible through the web and block certain websites.
• SEO Monitoring: Businesses can employ proxies to track SERPs and automate analyzing competitors’ links and keywords.
• Ad Verification: If you’re someone who regularly uses online ads to reach your target audience, proxies are great tools to verify and test how the advertisements are displayed for different groups of audiences in various locations.
• Brand Protection: Companies with valuable brands are constantly using proxies to identify fake websites using their brand name, counterfeit products, and other various malicious activities to protect their brand.
• Social Media Management: The social media limitations, such as the number of accounts allowed per IP, drive many social media managers to use proxies to have easy access to multiple accounts.
• Bypass Internet Restrictions: To access online content that is restricted to a certain group of people or even restrictions put in place by governments, users can utilize proxies and bypass the limits.
• Price Monitoring: Manually monitoring the prices of certain websites to compete with them or analyze the pricing is possible with the use of proxies that easily can give you access to the prices in different countries and bypass limitations.
• Privacy and Anonymity: Many users take advantage of reliable proxies solely because they want to browse the internet anonymously and be harder to track by hackers.
• Higher Network Performance: Proxy servers can help companies to have access to a better-optimized internet with improved connection security and speed.

Choosing the Right Proxy for Business Needs

There is no single proxy that is perfect for every need possible. However, there are some overall qualities that your proxy needs to have to get the best result and keep your personal information secure. While choosing the suitable proxy for your needs, we recommend paying close attention to these five general factors:

1. Large Proxy Pool Size: Having a large proxy pool size means that your proxy has access to numerous IP addresses, so there will be a lower chance of getting IP banned by a website for using the same IP address for many requests.
2. High-Quality Connection: Having a big proxy pool size doesn’t mean anything if the proxy is using already flagged IP addresses or the speed and security of the connection are low.   
3. Rational and Transparent Pricing: You should make sure that the proxy provider offers the proxies at an affordable price, preferably with flexible and transparent subscription models.
4. Extensive Location Coverage: You won’t be limited to certain IPs and countries, so you can access any geo-restricted content while staying hidden and anonymous.
5. Customer Support and Reliability: Like any other service, you should get proxies from a reliable provider. Having 24/7 customer support and helpful technical guidance is a must because you may require immediate help.

After ensuring that your chosen proxy benefits from all or most of the qualities above, you need to check if it’s the best choice for your requirements and budgets.

• Use Bright Data and Oxylabs to scrape business data from websites and mobile apps using rotating residential and mobile proxies.
• Use IPRoyal and Smartproxy to scrape data at an affordable rate using datacenter and ISP proxy.
• Use Webshare for a cheap proxy solution, good for beginner to scrape simple data.

Sometimes, setting up the proxies and changing them can be frustrating. To maximize the output of your proxies, you can utilize proxy management tools such as Bright Data Proxy Manager, Oxy Proxy Manager, IPRoyal Chrome Proxy Manager.