When you’re choosing a proxy provider, it’s easy to focus only on IP pool size and available proxy locations. But how you handle geo-targeting can make or break your data collection, marketing, and other workflows.
Your proxy IP makes your device appear to be operating from another spot on the map. With the right proxy server location and settings, you can bypass geo-blocks and see the web as a local user.
In this article, we’ll break down what actually counts as an IP’s location, how services decide where your proxy is, and how to pick the location for your tasks.
A proxy server location is defined by a combination of factors: the IP data stored in geolocation databases and the type of network (ASN), which indicates whether the address is residential, mobile, or a data center.
A proxy server location is determined firstly by its IP and the metadata attached to it. When you connect through a proxy, websites see the proxy IP instead of your real one — and that’s what they use to decide where your proxy server is located.
Geo-IP services (like MaxMind, IP2Location, and others) will return an approximate proxy server location: usually the country, city, and provider. Your real city might be New York, but if you use a proxy in London, every proxy location checker should show you as a user from London.
Beyond the IP itself, ASN (Autonomous System Number) also matters. It’s the number of the autonomous system that owns the IP range, essentially pointing to the organization or provider behind those addresses.
ASN helps you understand the type of network:
Looking at ASN is an easy sanity check for quality: if a provider claims to offer residential proxy locations, but the ASN clearly belongs to a big cloud platform, you know something’s off.
Why does the proxy type matter? Because it affects how often your IP rotates, how “trustworthy” it looks to websites, and how flexible you are with proxy locations.
Data center IPs typically offer high-speed, stable connections at a lower price compared to residential and mobile options.
Their proxy server location is tied to the data center itself. That means the pool of proxy locations is more limited: you get fewer small towns and “real-life” regions and more big, obvious infrastructure points.
On top of that, data center proxies are easier to detect and flag.
Residential IPs are addresses assigned to regular home users by ISPs.
For websites, a residential proxy IP looks like a normal household connection, tied to real cities and regions all over the world. This makes it much easier to create the effect of genuine local presence.
Because of this, residential proxies are ideal when you value trust and realism.
Mobile proxies use IPs from mobile carriers (3G, 4G, 5G). In practice, this emulates going online from a smartphone or a mobile modem.
The main advantage of mobile IPs is that they’re much harder to track and block. In mobile networks, the same IP can be shared by hundreds of users at once, constantly changing due to NAT and dynamic address allocation by the operator. If a website decides to block that IP address, it risks cutting off a significant portion of real mobile traffic.
Every use case has its own nuances, but there’s one core rule: your proxy server location should match your target resource or audience. Where your users or data are — that’s where your proxy should appear to be.
SEO specialists often need to track rankings and SERPs in specific regions.
To see the page “through the eyes” of users in another region, you need a proxy IP from that same region. That way, when search engines and tools check the location, they’ll treat you as a local user.
Search engines also limit the number of queries from a single IP to fight bots. If you run a parser without proxies, you’ll quickly run into CAPTCHA or temporary blocks. The fix is to use a pool of proxies distributed across the regions you’re interested in.
Residential and mobile IPs work especially well here. With rotating IPs, your script can automatically change proxy location, stay under request limits, and keep collecting data without bans.
For precise local SEO audits, use city-level proxy locations. With a provider like Froxy, you can choose not only the country, but also specific cities or even ISPs.
The closer your proxy server location is to your real target audience, the more accurate your SEO insights will be.
Let’s say you’ve launched a geo-targeted ad campaign and now you want to be sure users in a specific region see it correctly. But you’re sitting in another country — how do you check?
You use a proxy for ad verification.
For example, you want to see how your banner looks to people in Paris. You connect through a French proxy IP (ideally, one located in Paris), and then check if the ad actually appears and that it leads to the correct local landing page.
For this use case, mobile IPs are perfect: they emulate regular smartphone traffic and are less likely to be filtered out. Residential IPs also work great.
Datacenter proxies, on the other hand, may not show ads reliably. Ad systems sometimes ignore or filter impressions from known server IP ranges, so you might get an incomplete picture.
In e-commerce and online retail, prices, availability, and even product listings can vary significantly by region. A global store might show different prices per country, while a marketplace can adjust stock and offers per city.
To collect up-to-date, localized data, you rotate proxies across your target regions. For example:
Many e-commerce sites actively protect themselves from scraping: they limit frequent requests or show partial data. Proxies help you get around that, without crossing the line into abusive behavior.
When selecting a proxy location for market research, follow your actual market geography.
Proxies are also widely used to access geo-restricted content: streaming platforms, news sites, game servers, or even search results that change depending on the country.
A classic example is a streaming platform with different movie collections by region. When you connect through a proxy in the right country, the service checks your proxy location and unlocks the local catalog. The same logic applies to online games: some titles split players by region, and a proxy helps you join, say, an Asian server from Europe.
Here, connection quality is critical. You want enough bandwidth and low latency so your stream or game doesn’t lag. That’s why high-quality datacenter proxies from a nearby location in the target country are often a good fit.
Always read a service’s terms of use regarding proxies — violating them can result in your account being banned.
The local proxy also allows you to test the service under the same constraints and conditions as real users. Check legal requirements like GDPR in Europe or local content restrictions in specific countries.
Without this local perspective, it’s very easy to miss critical UX issues, blocked features, or compliance-related differences that only show up in certain regions.
You’ve picked a proxy and a region — say, a US residential IP. How do you make sure it really appears in the right place and that your proxy works as expected?
The easiest way is to use an online IP lookup service (search for “check my proxy location”). This can be WhatIsMyIP or any similar tool. Just open the site before and after enabling your proxy.
Don’t go too far, visit our IP check page. If you have a proxy enabled, the page will immediately display:
If you use rotating proxies that change IPs at a specified frequency, check several addresses from the pool provided. Reload the IP check page several times or make several requests at the specified address rotation interval, and then compare the results.
Always test new proxies. It takes a couple of minutes, but you will avoid situations during data collection when some of the requests come from the “wrong” IPs.
Perfect proxies for accessing valuable data from around the world.
By “safe location change,” we mean this: you change your virtual region without leaking your real whereabouts and without breaking the rules of the service you’re accessing. In other words, you use a proxy to change location in a way that’s both private and compliant.
Check your IPs, stay in control of geo-targeting, and don’t forget about security and ethics.
With the right proxy locations, you can research local markets, verify ads, and bypass regional restrictions as if you were physically in that country. A properly configured setup — where you know exactly where is proxy server located for each task and how to use proxy to change location safely — turns geo-restrictions into a solvable technical detail, not a blocker.
And Froxy proxies can back you up with reliable IPs, flexible server location options, and a global pool you can grow with.