Europages is an online business directory and it’s one of the largest databases for European businesses. It not only helps users know the top competitors in their industry, it also helps them understand the wider market. Through Europages, users can find various business opportunities and ways to promote their own businesses.
As one of the largest business databases, there’s a lot of valuable data inside it that you can use to draw insights into the current market and utilize those insights into increasing your business’s sales and revenue. Manually extracting all that data though would take a lot of time and effort, so if you want to do it quickly and efficiently, you need to use a web scraping tool.
A web scraping tool alone is not enough either. You need to pair it with a proxy to prevent Europages from being able to detect your use of a web scraper and banning your account because Europages doesn’t allow the usage of any automation tool on their site.
Let’s set up a Europages proxy server.
For Windows:
To set up proxies in Windows, simply search for “Proxy Settings” in your windows search bar and open the search result.
You are then given two options to choose from: Automatic proxy setup or Manual proxy setup. If you want windows to automatically detect your proxy settings, choose the first option. Choose the second option if you want to utilize a specific ip address and port number.
If you chose the first option, then:
- Turn on Automatically detect Settings
- Turn on Use setup script
- Enter the script address
- Click Save
If you chose the second option, then:
- Turn on Use a proxy server
- Input both server address and port number
- If you have any addresses you would like to visit without a proxy, enter them here
- Turn on Don’t use the proxy server for local addresses check box if you want to access a local server without a proxy
- Click Save
Image Alt Text: Windows Automatic Proxy Setup
For Mac:
To start configuring your proxy settings in MacOS, simply:
Step 1. Click on the Apple Icon.
Step 2. On the drop down menu, click on “System Preferences”.
Step 3. Click on “Network”
Step 4. Click on “Advanced”
Note: Make sure to connect to your wi-fi first.
Step 5. Click on “Proxies”
This should then redirect you to MacOS proxy settings. MacOS is more straightforward compared to windows. You only have one option which is to manually configure your proxy server.
Here are the steps to follow:
- Select which proxy IP protocol you want to configure. This depends on which protocols your proxy service provider offers.
- Turn on Secure Web Proxy
- Input the Proxy Server Address and Port Number
- Click OK to save the configurations
Note: You may be prompted for your Mac user password to save your settings.
Image Alt Text: Configuring MacOS Proxy Settings
Congratulations! You have now finished configuring a Europages proxy server.
