5 Ways Businesses Use Proxy Servers

Free proxy servers are all over the internet, but do not be fooled! Public proxies are often created by cybercriminals that want to steal your data! The beloved, well-advertised privacy benefits come from legitimate proxy providers, bound by law to never distribute or misuse private information. Some internet users may be hesitant to pay for the unfamiliar service and fall into the trap of free proxies. Even if you decide to accept the risks and use public servers, the internet connection will be slow and inconsistent.

The market is full of great providers that have their strengths and weaknesses. Some choose to find the best servers for individuals that want more privacy without suffering worsened performance metrics, while others specialize in large deals for businesses that need many addresses from all around the world. But why do large companies need proxy servers in the first place? What are they trying to hide?

In this article, we will talk about 5 ways proxy servers are beneficial for businesses and their marketing. Smaller companies always look for cheap residential proxies to assist their business tasks. Datacenter addresses are cheaper and faster but fall short in providing sufficient protection. Different business tasks in the digital world may often require many addresses, and cheap residential proxies can fulfill most requirements. While the pricing only improves performance metrics. But now, let's focus on the most common use cases for proxy servers in the business world.

Track competitors without interruptions

To outperform their competitors, modern businesses have to constantly monitor the differences between themselves and rival companies. In the last few decades, the digitalization of intellectual resources, shops, and advertisements let us track information about other businesses without real-life research and physical interactions. To determine the state of competition in the market, business representatives visit their websites, track their following on social media platforms, and monitor their visibility on search engines.

The readily available public information offers enough knowledge to compare companies and determine their rankings on the market. To get the most out of this data businesses need to monitor their rivals all the time, capitalize on their weaknesses and quickly prepare an answer for their changes.

Constant, manual collection of public data takes too much time. Thankfully we have web scrapers — automated robots that extract and organize information from targeted web servers. Without the need for other employees, scrapers automate the collection of data and perform these tasks much faster.

Automated bots and their activity often looks unnatural from the point of recipient servers. Bots that visit the website may send too many connection requests. If the page uses rate limiting, it can filter out scrapers from real users and ban them.

Getting an IP address blacklisted, especially if it is an address of a company, can be dangerous. Finally, this is where proxy servers come in. With the help of a good provider, you can get residential proxy addresses and use them to mask your IP. Even better, you can set up a rotating proxy to cycle between and mix different identities while collecting information from a website. If the IP gets banned, your main address will remain untouched.

Find influencers

Influencers on social media pages often have audiences that love to interact with the presented content and its creator. Individuals that manage to capture the attention of thousands of users may want to transition their hobby into a source of income. Most influencers start earning money through marketing deals with other companies.

Businesses looking for partners scrape social media platforms to find the best matches that could promote their products. However, these networks and their websites have tons of users, which makes them very sensitive to bots. Residential proxies save the day, as their IPs come from real internet service providers, which makes them harder to track.

Fake social media accounts

Continuing the topic of social media, companies need popular pages on the biggest social media network for greater client outreach. However, once the page is created another layer of marketing is required to encourage its growth. Businesses often use proxy servers to create fake, but believable accounts that pretend to be interested in their page. While social media pages, the ones with single-digit followers are practically invisible. Proxies help companies create tens if not hundreds of fake accounts to enter the realm of relevancy and visibility.

Improvement of website security

As we already discussed, rapid connections to competitor websites can slow down their website. But what if that happens to your company? Funnily enough, proxy servers can be a solution to this problem. To avoid an unmanageable load of web servers businesses set up reverse proxies that control and buffer the incoming traffic.

Workplace management

Some successful businesses love to maintain close control over their employees to minimize the waste of company time. Proxy servers can help control the internet in the workplace and eliminate distracting or inappropriate pages. The network redirected through a proxy server also helps to control access to it. A reasonable amount of control minimizes time wasting, while restricted access to some websites reduces the potential risk to the company and its brand.

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