Introduction to Using TrustedProxies with Rank Tracker

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Whatever the sphere of business operation, we all need up-to-date information – lots of it, as quickly as we can get it. This calls for powerful and flexible solutions that can do the heavy lifting for us. And proxy servers can be the solution. TrustedProxies offers dependable, high-quality proxy servers. With their kind of service, you can save money and rapidly generate leads. For optimum performance, you can combine TrustedProxies with Rank Tracker from SEO PowerSuite a product of Link Assistant.

This tutorial focuses on SERP extraction using TrustedProxies and Rank Tracker. Search Engine Results Pages are web pages displayed when users search online with a search engine like Google. You may query specific terms or keywords. The Big-G Stealth Extractor from TrustedProxies gets your SERPs and keywords at far higher speeds than regular proxy servers. You can find the highest-ranking pages in search results, and market to those pages. You can also find high-ranking pages to do business with.

The Big-G Stealth Extractor is a custom tool developed by TrustedProxies for scraping SERPs. It is not a proxy server, or a large pool of IP addresses; but, for ease of use, it is designed to use the Proxy Server settings in your software.

Rank Tracker is a tool to research keywords, monitor rankings, and analyze competitors’ keyword ranks.

The first part of this tutorial shows you how to set up TrustedProxies’ Big-G Stealth Extractor for your projects. These steps include:

  • Optimization for personal browser and OS (a safeguard against blocking).
  • System settings
  • Browser settings
  • Setup of proxy in Windows 10
  • Setup of proxy in MacOS
  • Code example for a request using Python.

You can also test your settings in a browser.

In the second part of this tutorial, you’ll configure Rank Tracker from SEO PowerSuite with the settings needed for optimum performance with TrustedProxies.

Simplifying SEO

TrustedProxies are designed to easily integrate with platforms such as keyword ranking software. In this tutorial, the keyword ranking software we cover is Rank Tracker. Integrating the services allows you to conduct hassle-free operations without being on the wrong side of search engines and getting blocked.

Use cases

Some use cases for which this integration can be very beneficial:

Researching your competition: Good SEO proxies provide you with the tools to check out the competition’s setup and successful strategies anonymously, and gain insight into how they operate.

Social media marketing: Social media marketing is a significant force for increasing your visibility and brand popularity.

Scraping the web: Information – a crucial part of an enterprise’s growth strategy – is readily available on the Internet, but the amount of time spent manually gathering that data would be prohibitive. The web scraping process saves time by allowing for automated data extraction.

Before you set up: Notes on optimization

Once you’ve determined which Google ccTLD you’ll work on – e.g., google.com, google.de. – adopt and follow the settings below.

  • This tutorial will use google.com.

URLs

  • The Big-G enables you to access Google. Note that you can only query the location that the server is based in. For example, google.com with a US Big-G, google.co.uk with a UK Big-G.
  • Your connection to the Big-G server is over HTTP, but the URLs you send to Google should be sent over HTTPS.
  • URLs need to be as organic as possible. Therefore, do not use unnatural query constructs, e.g. num=100, or the gl and uule tags. Using these will lead to blocks, because Google is highly sensitive to manipulation of the URL through mass scraping.

Connections

  • Close the TCP/IP connection after each unique keyword query completes, to avoid severely limiting the capabilities of The Big-G.
  • Cookies can be used but must be disposed of properly after each unique keyword request completes.

User Agents

As with IP addresses, so also rotation of your user agents can be helpful during the web scraping process. If you make repeated requests from the same IP address to access websites, the activity becomes suspicious and the IP address may be blocked.

  • Use up-to-date user agents. It’s essential that your user agents be for current browser and operating systems only. You must check them every 6 months and replace them when necessary. Any older user agents are very easy for Google to detect and will lead to problems for you.
  • Use randomly but retain the same user agent for each SERP for each keyword. For example retain user agent A for pages 1, 2, 3… of your first keyword query. Retain user agent B for pages 1, 2, 3… of your next keyword query. A selection can be downloaded from here.

Be adaptable

Note that Google can often change their algorithms/behavior, so please be aware that you may occasionally need to adjust your scraping technique and/or how your software operates.

Follow the link to Part 2, Set Up Your Computer for TrustedProxies, where we cover configuring Rank Tracker with the settings needed for optimum performance with TrustedProxies.

Published by Thomas Rankin