Do Multiple IP Addresses Increase the Effectiveness of Web Harvesting?
The simplest answer to the question is yes, and for good reason. Leveraging multiple IP addresses provides an unparalleled level of anonymity. It’s easy to see why this is important when looking at the competitive intelligence marketplace where businesses need to know what competitors are selling, how much they sell it for, how often they change the price, and where they sell it.
Gaining access to this type of intelligence helps significantly with positioning. The problem is both parties know about this practice. Not only are your competitors harvesting data, they are paying attention to what is happening on their own website as well. Throughout the process, the most common reason website visitors are blocked is because the website owner identifies who is visiting his or her website through the visitor’s IP address. Today, most companies regularly review their website traffic and it’s easy to see whenever and wherever on the site a competitor visits.
Depending on what you are viewing or collecting and how frequently you visit, competitors may simply monitor your activity. Yet, over time, competitors will often block or limit you based on the amount of data you pull, added website administrative costs, or simply because they can. In other cases, when organizations recognize you as a competitor, they will automatically direct you to false or misleading information. This can lead to more detrimental results since you are making important business decisions based on incorrect or spoofed data.
In addition to your IP address, it’s important to understand that web traffic browsing patterns can also reveal one’s identity. When a cloaked visitor hits the same website at the same time every day, and pulls the same pieces of data every day, the website owner may not know the visitor’s identity, but at the very least the pattern reveals intentions. However, by visiting target websites using non-attributable IP addresses and at varying times throughout the day, it’s difficult for website owners to recognize the visitor.
