Web Scraping & Data Center Proxies

Web scraping and data center proxies go hand in hand. In fact, the former is heavily dependent on the latter for all terms and purposes. For every business relying on web scraping, appropriate proxies are absolutely essential. But, what exactly does a data center proxy mean? What does it do? How does it help to scrape? In order to understand these concepts, it is imperative to understand what data scraping is.

What is Data Scraping?

Data scraping is merely the method or the technique involved to extract large volumes of data from a document or a page. And when this is done on webpages, we refer to the process as web scraping. Instead of manually copying and pasting the data, the necessary scraping software will scan through the webpages and extract information as per requirement. The data is then stored in a local drive on your computer. This is what scraping entails to.

Where Does The Problem Lie?

While data scraping seems to be a very effective and useful technique for extracting large volumes of data from a site, it is not always that smooth. Most websites tend to resist this kind of scraping activity and block this software out the moment they detect scraping mechanisms. This is mainly done to restrict access to open data to all the site visitors.

What is the Solution?

The solution to this problem lies in the concept of proxies. Websites detect scraping activities when they figure out excessively fast movements from one particular IP address.

Data center proxies are not associated with any internet service provider. Long answer to your question can be found here: “What are Data Center Proxies?”, and we will only touch the surface of this topic. So, a secondary provider comes into the picture to provide you with a private IP address. This assigns the necessary anonymity to your IP. So, when you are using a scraping software, all you have to do is use this masked IP address and the website will not be able to detect any abnormal activity.

Benefits of Data Center Proxies

Data center proxies prove to be a very useful concept when it comes to adapting web scraping software and techniques. Yes, this is true that it provides anonymity for conducting scraping activities. But, what really makes it stand out? Here are some ideas.

The swift response time provided by the proxy IPs is the most crucial benefit. This ensures that there are no lags in the scraping process while protecting your identity at the same time

Using data center proxies is still a relatively cheap method for getting through or bypassing blocked data scraping techniques. This forms the most convenient idea to harvest large volumes of data.

Most importantly, data center proxies protect your identity while making a few clicks on the web page to gather all the necessary information.

Drawbacks

As compared to residential proxies, data center proxies are not as trusted upon by the website owners. As a result, some of these pages tend to block this proxy out as well. Besides, some locations block out data center proxies while trying to access geo-blocked content.

Data Center Proxies Use Cases

Data center proxies have gathered a lot of interest and accolade from businesses and individuals alike. But, there are some popular use cases where the application of proxies has been more pronounced.

Brand protection is one of the areas where data center proxies have really proven to be successful. In fact, owing to its speed and low cost, data center proxies help in monitoring the activities on a particular brand’s webpage. It is not limited to that only. Illegal use of a brand can actually result in a substantial financial loss. Also, unauthorized use could ruin the image of a particular company. So, online commerce platforms resort to these data center proxies to protect the brand name, image, and market share by taking quick action.

Apart from that, market research also witnesses the application of data center proxies. It is efficient, cost-effective, and quick in action.

Choosing a Proxy Service Provider

The advancing world has so many proxy server providers for you to choose from. How do you distinguish one from the next?

Reviews

One of the most effective ways to identify a good service provider is to go through all the reviews available online. These give a comprehensive report on the performance of the provider and its effectiveness. You could analyze these reviews and come to your own conclusion.

Dedicated vs. Shared proxies

Of course, the dedicated proxies are a tad bit more expensive than their counterparts. But dedicated proxies offer better speed and efficiency.

Support options

The best proxy server provider would be one that offers adequate customer support options. This would include technical support and other accessory support, round the clock. A combination of chat support, email support, and telephonic support would be ideal for a proxy provider.