Choosing Right Proxies for Price Scraping

Price scraping- You might be familiar with this term if you are in the business where there is a need to scrape prices via bots and crawlers. Price scraping means extracting prices from the internet via bots.

The businesses need to scrape prices to stay ahead in the market competition by keeping an eye on competitors’ rates. It is also used to do market research. Businesses also do price scraping to reckon that resellers are selling the goods on compliant rates or not.

Businesses don’t scrape prices from each competitor’s website instead use e-commerce sites, b2c, and c2c platforms for this job. Because e-commerce sites are the most visited sites for online shopping. E-commerce sites sell all brands. These sites let businesses get a blow-by-blow account of the pricing strategies, promotions, discounts, and special offers of competitors. This is the main reason for price scraping.

But a problem that arises is that some sites are paranoid about these bots. They restrict them to do the job. Hence, it results in failure. But proxies are the lifesaver. Proxies for price scraping allows efficient data collection and price scraping. There are thousands of proxies for web scraping to do the job. Also, there are some tools to scrape prices online, but the prices are skyrocketing.

This article is intended to give an overview of why price scraping is necessary. Also, give an account on proxies for price scraping and guide you in choosing the right proxies for price scraping.

WHY BUSINESSES NEED TO DO PRICE SCRAPING?

There are many reasons that businesses opt for price scraping. Some of them are:

1)      Competitors research:

The main reason that businesses need to scrape prices is, to do competitor research. The e-commerce and auction sites pave their way to collect price data. Almost all brands and businesses sell on these sites. These sites help in extracting prices, tell pricing strategies, and guide the business to set acceptable consumer-based pricing. All of these factors considerably lead to price scraping. This helps to get real-time data. Price scraping help business to compete in the long run.

2)      To Check Prices Are Compliant:

There are many resellers and third parties that sell goods and services on behalf of a business. To reckon that are they selling the goods on company compliant rates or not scraping is necessary. This helps them gather records.

WHY BUSINESSES CHOOSE PROXIES FOR PRICE SCRAPING?

There are two ways to scrape prices. A business can go for an in-house management system to scrape data or go for proxies to do the job.

The main reason that drives most of the business to opt for proxies for price scraping and not for the in-house system is the ‘cost’. Any in-house system demands installation and then maintenance cost. Also, the task needs professionals to perform it, as its not an easy job to do. All of this results in higher costs, so business goes for proxies.

There are many proxies to go for, but some key points must be taken into consideration while choosing.

Here is a quick overview of choosing the right proxies for price scraping.

CHOOSING RIGHT PROXIES FOR PRICE SCRAPING:

This section is based on two points

1) Proxy providers

2) Type of proxies to go for.

Let us start with proxy providers

Proxy providers:Proxy providers are the sources you look for getting proxies. What if these providers are not reliable and don’t provide better proxies? All of your investment will go in vain. Also, you can’t scrape the web properly. So, always go for quality proxy providers. ProxyAqua is a reputable provider in the market. They are best proxies based on performance, marketing, customer support, and reliability.

Second,  we may carry on the article by telling the type of proxies for price scraping.

WHICH TYPE OF PROXY IS GOOD FOR PRICE SCRAPING?

Mostly two types of proxies are provided by the proxy providers for price scraping:

1)      Datacenter proxies

2)      Residential rotating proxies (backconnect)

Datacenter proxies are proxies that have a smaller pool. It can be created by a single-host server. Many proxies can operate within a single server. So, many proxies may share the same sub-network IP. Similar IPs can be problematic. It sends requests to the websites at a time and alerts the system. Too much request from a similar IP can put a jam on your face. Because many e-commerce sites block these sub-network IPs in one go. No matter how many datacenter proxies you have, if they block sub-network, you lose access. So, using these proxies to crawl these e-commerce sites is not a good idea. But, due to the fast action mechanism and efficiency, businesses prefer using datacenter proxies. You may get the real-time data faster but not with higher success rates.

In some cases, these e-commerce sites detect the scrapers and start sending false pricing data. The bots carry false information to you. Thus, you can face a big problem if this happens. Your competitors may cross the hits and you can lose your position.

On the other hand, you can go for rotating residential proxies. These proxies are associated with an internet service provider. They have real IP and physical location addresses. It has a rotating IP which rotates every time. These are called backconnect proxies. If you use these proxies for price scraping, even if the site detects (rarely) it will not send false pricing data. Hence, you are on a safer side.

CONCLUSION:

Price scraping is an essential part of running a business. There are many ways and tools to do so. Thus, the one cheapest and reliable way is choosing proxies for price scraping. They allow safe surfing and crawling. They protect your information and hide your identity, fool the sites, and bring you real-time data properly.

This article concludes the reasons for price scraping and guides you over choosing right proxies for price scraping so, you can witness a boost in your revenue.