Tech-savvy companies and individuals can reap numerous benefits by utilising residential IP address hopping. While businesses can attain access to more varied data by accessing different geolocations, individuals typically use similar service to obfuscate their location for enhanced internet privacy. With more and more companies relying on big data analytics, having a residential proxy provider – a service that allows its users to collect data more efficiently – is becoming a prerequisite for staying competitive. Simultaneously, individuals are starting to use these services to purchase limited-edition items and receive substantial discounts on goods sold online.
Proxy servers act as a gateway between the end-users and the websites they browse.
Along with forwarding web requests, they also act as a firewall and web filter, provide shared network connections, and cache data to speed up common requests. That said, its use cases range from market research to managing social networks. Below is a comprehensive list of 10 ways internet users, both companies and individuals, can benefit from using a residential proxy server:
1. Brand protection. Residential IPs allow brands to scan the web for copies and counterfeits of their products. Having a better overview of what is offered online enables them to react to intellectual property violations and protect their customers from fraud.
2. SEO and Business Intelligence. Having an uncensored view of the internet allows IP proxy users to gather and analyze competitor-related data such as their prices without being blocked or misled. Often, that is a substantial asset that enables businesses to gain a competitive edge.
3. Buying high-demand limited edition Items. Special release gadgets, designer clothing, and –most recently–sneakers are now an emerging alternative asset class. That rising demand for such items makes the act of a successful purchase much more difficult. That is why eager resellers have started making use of residential proxies purchase requests and successfully obtain these coveted items before anyone else.
“Whenever a limited-edition sneaker is a few days away from ‘dropping’, we see the demand for proxies jump five, ten times of regular proxy demand. For instance we just experienced a spike last week with Supreme x Nike SB Dunk Low and Air Jordan 1 University Blue drops,” said Karolis Toleikis, CEO of IPRoyal – a residential proxy provider.
4. Ad verification. With malvertising and ad fraud continuously taking up new forms, an increasing amount of websites are infiltrated by malicious actors who prevent the proper delivery of ads to the intended audience. Using services as such, companies can check whether their ads are running correctly and showing up on the right websites, exactly how they were initially intended to.
5. App testing. Mobile app testing is often a complex process. Different screen resolutions, several operating systems, multiple connection types – all of that has to be accounted for before releasing an app to the public. Residential IP providers enable app developers to improve their testing flow so that their users experience the app content as it was meant to.
6. Content delivery. Millions of individuals have to deal with the fact that some content is geo-restricted to them. However, these restrictions can be surpassed by temporarily borrowing somebody else’s IP, which makes the internet genuinely borderless.
7. Price comparison. Prices for goods and –especially– digital products tend to vary substantially from country to country. For example, while a monthly Youtube subscription might cost $11.99 to a person residing in the US, it will only set back a Russian resident by $2.69. Residential IP providers like IPRoyal allow users to find the best deals on products sold online.
8. Affiliate link testing. With affiliate marketing fraud on the rise, more and more companies employ ad verification proxies to verify that their affiliate marketers are operating under the proper conditions and guidelines. Companies rent out residential IPs to scan through their advertisers’ landing pages, detect malicious redirects thus protecting their customers from fraud.
9. Talent sourcing. As working from home is become part of the new normal – companies are increasingly having to rely on online recruiting. This is where a residential proxy becomes useful allowing them to use web-scraping without getting banned and spend less time manually going through hundreds of applications.
10. Internet privacy. When using residential proxies individuals can appear as if they are browsing the net in another location. Proxies keep your online activity, personal information, IP address, browsing history, and other data anonymous and secure.
11. Social media management. Social media managers often create several accounts to promote their brand. But the issue they face is that Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms tend to ban users who have multiple accounts. Since these apps track users by their IP address, employing a residential proxy is a way to circumvent these restrictions.
“IP proxies –such as the ones we provide at IPRoyal – mask the user device’s IP address and cause websites and services to believe they’re in another region or country. Even though it might not sound like much, the practical applications and the benefits it generates for their users are virtually endless,” said Karolis Toleikis, CEO of IPRoyal.
In order to take advantage of many freedoms and opportunities residential proxies enable – you should choose a legitimate, secure, and trustworthy proxy service provider that will offer clean proxies, which means they have not been blacklisted, banned, or flagged for suspicious activity.