Residential proxies are famous for providing anonymous browsing and legitimate security that allows unblocking virtually any publicly available content on the internet.
Bypassing IP blocks, overcoming geo-restrictions, and regaining access to sites that have already been blocked for you – that’s the main features that an intermediary server with residential IP addresses grants for their users.
What are lesser-known yet significant use cases for residential proxies? We will list ten fields of activity where you can apply them right away after you have finished being surprised.
1. Avoiding blanket bans
A blanket ban is a type of ban when a bunch of IPs is blocked based on some general reason that has nothing to do with a particular IP address.
IPs are used to filter the traffic. Many websites tend to blanket ban certain IPs because they are seen as more prone to engage in sending too many requests and overloading the sites. Some sites seek to block spam or malicious attacks by blocking entire batches of IPs without niggling about single users.
Residential IPs let you avoid this issue by changing your IPs constantly and stepping out of any single category that might be the target of a blanket ban.
2. Ad verification
Residential proxies allow avoiding any blocks or restrictions if you want to check how well your ads are displayed online. You must verify your ads if you’re going to repel any fraudulent practices that limit your ads or replace them with different ads imposed there by hackers. These proxies will help you do that without worrying about any limitations.
3. Talent Sourcing
Finding suitable job applicants might be challenging. Online recruiting is an essential part of finding future cornerstones of your company, especially when you want to target potential employees worldwide.
Residential proxies enable accessing various markets for specialists where you can find them by using IPs from different regions and accessing limited platforms. If you want to avoid going through myriads of applications manually, you will gain the use of proxies for any automation software for this purpose.
4. Link Testing
You need to disguise your identity to be able to track your affiliates and avoid losing customers because of strange practices under conditions that haven’t been agreed on. It’s important to keep all links working and appropriate while avoiding any malicious or wrong links. There’s no better way to check that than by coming from multiple IPs with different geo-targeting.
5. SEO monitoring
With residential proxies, you can scrape your competitors’ sites without risking getting blocked. You will get information about sources of their traffic and keywords that help them lure different internet users.
You can also check the accessibility of your content on search engines based on different geo-locations. That will help you improve your links, keywords, and overall availability.
6. Avoiding CAPTCHAs
Residential proxies are not only good for unblocking content or avoiding blocks but also for reducing check-ups that might lead to blocks. For example, sometimes, you need to confirm CAPTCHA tests and prove that you are not a robot. You can simply avoid these tests with many residential IPs and access the required content.
With residential proxies, almost nobody can track your activity. Therefore, you will not receive those annoying CAPTCHA tests as often, and you will not raise any suspicions for an exceeded number of requests under a single IP address.
7. Load testing
One of the best uses of residential proxies can be found in load testing. When testing your app, website, or any other system, you wish to identify its weak spots by checking how well it performs under specific traffic loads. You need to recreate these traffic loads as realistic as possible.
Residential IP addresses come from various devices located in different households. They have different operating systems and geo-locations that come from multiple types of devices. That makes the simulated traffic as real as it gets.
8. Comparing prices
A massive part of bypassing geo-restrictions is unlocking prices on e-commerce sites that vary depending on the country or your personal information. This way, you can snoop your competitors and learn about the roots of their success in different countries.
You can also land specific merchandise for yourself that costs way less when you can see all the prices and are not bound to the price displayed only in your country or region. That is helpful for either getting desired items cheaper or planning your marketing strategy when you want to expand abroad.
9. Accessing different retail items
Just like residential proxies are perfect for comparing prices in different countries, the same applies to various merchandise in foreign countries that the same retail sites might be putting for sale. Having different residential IP addresses is even more critical when you want to buy limited items that you can’t buy in bigger volumes regularly.
Many stores have policies that ban users trying to sneak through these limitations with different accounts. It’s easy to block them when they share the same IP address. With residential proxies, that is no longer a concern.
10. Website testing
You shouldn’t confuse it with load testing. You need to test your websites in terms of their appearance, how well the code works, and whether all the content is displayed properly. There you need to see your website in the eyes of different visitors of that site.
It means that you must visit this website from different geo-locations and different devices. You don’t have the resources to do that manually because you can’t be in many places in a short time. Therefore, residential proxies allow doing precisely that without going anywhere from your current location.
Summing-up
The key functions of residential proxies can be used for various purposes that include the need to bypass any kind of restrictions based on IP bans or where you need to imitate the appearance of many different internet users. Residential proxies allow your business to grow from testing your systems to finding new employees or items to buy.
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