Are you a travel fare aggregator that collects information related to flight prices, hotel rooms prices and so on? Do you use scraping to gather all this vital information? Well, this article is for you!
For starters, web scraping is a process of extraction of data from online sources including websites, portals, marketplaces, forums, and the like, with the help of automated scripts and bots.
But more often than not, web scraping is not seen healthy as it puts undesirable stress on the websites from which the data is scraped. This is the reason why websites employ advanced techniques to detect any scraping activities and block the respective IP address.
If you are a business that aggregates travel fare, you will be able to relate to the struggle of getting a new IP address every time to conduct the scraping effectively. If this is all you needed to know – then head over to oxylabs. They offer more in-depth information on proxies optimized specifically for travel fare aggregation.
And now, if you stayed here, more on proxies.
What are Proxies?
Proxies act as a gateway between your computer and the destination server. The request that originates from your computer looks like it originated from the proxy server. This way, the destination server is unable to trace you back, and can only track the IP address of your proxies.
As it goes without saying, the more the number of proxies you have, the safer you are! This is because you will be able to rotate your proxies, and the target website would see you as a real customer/visitor.
Types of Proxies
There are various kinds of proxies. Some of these include:
- Data center proxies
Data center proxies are dedicated (or shared) proxies that are provided by a third party and ensure a high level of authenticity along with quick response time. These proxies are not affiliated to an Internet Service Provider.
It is essential to mention here that these proxies might not be the right choice for conducting intensive scraping activities. This is because web servers often end up identifying data center proxies and block them, thus defeating their whole purpose.
- Residential proxies
Contrary to the data center proxies, which are provided by third-parties, residential proxies are provided by an Internet Service Provider. In addition to providing high anonymity levels, one of the best things of these proxies is that they are legitimate IP addresses attached to a physical location. Thus, they look genuine, and changes in them getting blocked are relatively low.
Fare Aggregation and Proxies
If you are an online travel agency, a travel fare aggregator, or a rental car company or similar business along these lines, you will agree with us that price comparison is an integral part of your daily operations.
It is necessary to price your services and products relative to the competitors’ prices to gain an edge and stay ahead in the market. However, accessing valuable information is not as easy as it seems.
Many times, the target websites are already aware of their competition. They keep track of their competitors and feed their scripts and bots with the wrong information to keep their prices competitive.
All this happens in real-time, and your business could suffer severely because of it. You could end up providing the wrong information to your customers. Thus, web scraping, although, a crucial process to gain business intelligence could backfire at times.
This is why it is highly recommended to use proxies that mimic a real customer, and help you in collecting the most accurate data.
Choosing the Right Proxies
It is important to mention that travel aggregators not only need to make use of proxies, but they also need to ensure that they are using the right ones. First, it is imperative to ensure that the target websites do not block their proxies, but they can collect all the information. Second, they also need to ensure that their proxies are fast enough to provide swift response time.
This is because as a travel comparison and aggregator website, your visitors expect results quickly and reliably. It is for these reasons that we highly recommend you to use a combination of data center proxies and residential proxies.
While residential proxies look genuine and mimic real traffic, data center proxies provide the best response time. Also, when compared to residential proxies, data center proxies are more stable and cheaper.
Additionally, using a wide range of proxies also make sense if you want to combat geographically based pricing strategies.
The Wrap Up
As is evident, it is the need of the hour for the travel aggregators to collaborate with proxy providers that provide a large pool of proxies from the varied locations along with high levels of stability and performance.
It is easy to conclude that your choice of proxies will impact your travel fare aggregator business immensely, and could determine its success.
