When you access a website, the web server can log your IP address. If it detects any suspicious activity like data gathering, it may block your IP, preventing you from accessing the website. This is where proxies come into play. In simple terms, a proxy can change your IP address and location.
There are many services that offer proxy products. But choosing the best proxy service provider is often challenging for users without much knowledge. For example, you need to consider things like performance, infrastructure, or even ethical sourcing, to name a few.
Proxyway, a trusted researcher of the proxy server market, released its Fifth Annual Report on the proxy server market to help individual users and companies in finding the best provider for their needs. Check the report to get a clear idea of the proxy server market.
What Are Proxies?
Before getting into the nitty-gritty of the proxy server market, it is crucial to understand what proxies are. When you want to access an article or any similar content, you typically initiate a search query and your browser sends a connection request to the specific web server hosting the content. Within this request, crucial information about your device and browser is included. This information (similar to your home address) contains details such as your device’s IP address.
Once the connection request reaches the target server, it immediately sends back the requested data as a response, which is then received by your device using the IP address assigned by your Internet Service Provider.
Websites are often very protective of their content, leading to various scenarios where they restrict access. For example, geographical restrictions, limitations on data gathering from public sources, and others. So, by tracking your IP address, a website can block it.
In essence, proxies act as an intermediary between your device and the website you’re accessing. By routing your traffic through a proxy server, it masks your real IP and location. This enhances your online privacy and helps protect your identity from being easily traced.
Common Proxy Use Cases
Be it personal or business use, proxies are of immense help in a variety of cases. Check the most common use cases of proxies below.
Improved Privacy
When you access online content using your IP address, your digital footprint becomes traceable. However, using proxies can help to prevent web servers from building a user profile. As a result, proxies help you maintain a higher level of privacy while browsing the internet.
Wide Access to Blocked Content
Some content on the internet is made for specific regions. If your physical location is outside those regions, you can’t access the content with your original IP address because it contains your real location. Instead, you can change your location using a proxy.
Business Data Scraping
If you’ve ever collected large amounts of data from the internet manually, you probably know how daunting the process is.. Building a scraper or using specialized software can help you automatically collect bulk data. The problem is web servers have firewalls to prevent such software or bots from collecting information.
When you use proxies in different locations the server can’t detect you as a bot because every time you make a request, you’ll seem like a different person.
Ad Monitoring
Business ads are one of the crucial marketing elements these days. But it might be difficult to monitor how your ads are performing in different locations using your original IP address.
For example, Ad fraud is a persistent issue, and proxies can help detect fraudulent activities by allowing you to view ads from different IP and monitor discrepancies in ad placements. Additionally, you can assess how ads are displayed and delivered to users across various locations.
Proxy Market Research Report 2023: What Is in It?
The proxy market research report may seem too technical for many users. We tried to simplify the report. Take a look.
- 12 Proxy Service Providers
Proxyway collects first-hand data from proxy service providers to portray the actual picture of the market. 12 providers participated in the survey this year, which includes leading companies like Bright Data or Oxylabs and new, yet promising providers like Webshare.
- Popular Proxy Types
Residential proxies are the most popular proxy type in the market. Surveyed proxy providers also emphasize rotating and dedicated datacenter proxies due to their increased demand. You will find the popularity rank of different proxies in the report.
- Improved Ethical Practice
The seizure of two known proxy providers in the last year shocked the industry. As a learning from the RSocks and 911 S5 events, the community is promoting ethical business practices to ensure healthy growth.
- Detailed Performance Report
When choosing the right proxy provider you need to consider different parameters. In this year’s report, you will find detailed performance reports for various proxy types. These reports also contain graphs and helpful visualizations so that you can quickly filter different services.
Conclusion
Knowing the proxy server market ins and outs is crucial before choosing a proxy provider for your business operations. Proxyway publishes the proxy market report every year to provide as much information on the market as possible.
In line with that, this year’s report has already been published. We suggest you take some time to go through the report and use it to make informed decisions when it comes to finding the best service for your needs.
