Price Scraping — Competitive Business Trend You Should Know About

Ever noticed how some ads are accurately tailored based on your browsing habits? And sometimes you still get these ads months after you googled about the specific product.

It is the result of exposing your IP address. An IP address acts similarly to a home address. Just like you can send out a letter or parcel with a return address, an IP address is the return address for any web request you make through your device. In simple terms, it is a numerical label given to every device connected to an internet connection.

While it’s not your fault that every web server you visit can see your geographical location and details such as your internet service, you can bring an end to this kind of exposure by using a proxy.

What is a Proxy?

This is a server that acts as an intermediary between a web server and an end-user. It misleads the web server into believing that the proxy server’s IP address belongs to the end-user.

Here is how it works.

Once you browse your internet using your computer installed with a proxy server, the web request you make does not come straight from your computer. It goes to the proxy server first, which then forwards the request to the web server.

Rather than read your IP address and location, the web server will read that of your proxy server. The proxy then receives the response from the web server and then forwards it to you.

There are different kinds of proxies.

Data Center Proxies

This is a type of proxy server that is generated in a data center. Data center proxies do not rely on the user’s internet service or ISP. They are artificial and have a remarkably high connection speed. You can get any number of data proxies you want with different locations attached to each depending on your needs.

Residential Proxies

While data center proxies are known for their high speed, residential proxies are very reliable. These proxies are connected to a real existing device that is attached to a specific physical location. If you need a proxy that hides your physical location and will not be easily detected, get a residential proxy.

Shared Proxy

Shared proxies are not a type of proxy, but rather a name referring to any type of proxy shared between several users who share the cost involved. It is suitable for anyone seeking a proxy on a budget. The only downsides are slow connections, especially during peak hours, and the fact that one user’s mistake costs the entire group of users.

Dedicated Proxies

This classifies the types of proxies dedicated to a single user. You could also call them private proxies. They are the best choice for businesses. They have a reliable connection and are not easy to detect unless you misuse the proxy.

Anonymous Proxies

As the name suggests, these are proxies that provide a high level of anonymity. They do not provide any information regarding the end-user, including their location. They act independently.

Proxies for Web Scraping

Proxies do more than provide individuals with a way to browse anonymously. They enable business owners to carry out market research through web scraping.

Any data collection expert will tell you that the internet is a bottomless pit of information. Web scraping is an automated technique of collecting this information found in websites and storing it in an excel sheet within the computer.

The data collected is then analyzed to deduce important market insight that helps business owners make better decisions.

Here are a few examples

1. Product creation — By studying the changes in consumer needs and tastes, the business can create products that meet these changes.
2. Technological Investment — Technology is evolving by the day, and unless you keep up with new innovations, you could miss out on opportunities to save money using technology.
3. Competitor monitoring — The only way to defeat your enemy is by monitoring their movements. Web scraping helps you collect data from your competitor’s websites and avoid surprises.
4. Customer experience — The customer is the boss of your business, and you ought to keep them happy. Through social media listening and collecting data from review websites, you can learn about areas in your customer service that need improvement.

A proxy ensures that you can scrape data from websites without raising the website owner’s suspicion and, in the process, get your IP address banned. By using a proxy server with rotating IP addresses, you can make numerous web requests without experiencing any hitches.

Some websites block IP addresses from specific geographical locations in what is known as geoblocking. If this is the case with you, a proxy with an IP address attached to another location makes it possible to access these websites and collect data.

Using Proxies for Price Scraping

In addition to web scraping, price scraping is also an important part of any business. It enables online-based retailers and e-commerce sites to offer competitive pricing.

This kind of scraping refers to the technique of using bots to monitor product prices, and other valuable information relevant to pricing intelligence. It can collect data such as discounts and sale offers from e-commerce websites and competitors’ sites.

Based on the information collected, the business owner can copy pricing details in-order to remain competitive in the market. The business owner could also lower their prices and set it below the baseline prices in the market. This move influences the buying decisions of price-sensitive consumers.

These bots slow down websites and mislead website owners when deriving analytics based on web traffic, cart abandonment, and conversion rates. For this reason, websites ban the IP address of any bot detected on the site.

To successfully scrape prices, you need proxies. A proxy with different IP addresses will make it possible to scrape data from the site undetected. And by using proxies attached to a different location, you can carry out extensive scraping on different geographical areas.

Conclusion

Your business will remain relevant in the market by obtaining market insight through web scraping. Price scraping, on the other hand, will guide you into setting competitive prices. Both techniques require the use of proxies. The right proxy will make the process smooth and give access to geo blocked websites.

These processes are sensitive, by all means, avoid using free proxies. Get a legitimate proxy vendor with reliable proxy servers.