Working in Europe for several foreign companies I often need proxies to check local rankings, see how marketing campaigns are appearing in other countries or to check one of our geo-targeted websites.
The problem with these proxies is that most time they are pretty slow and insecure. So when Bas was looking for a volunteer to test a new service called Geosurf, I stepped forward immediately!
Geosurf by BIScience gives you several possibilities to connect to proxies in over 60 countries and 24 cities in the USA:
1. Geosurf Toolbar
The Geosurf Toolbar for sure is the easiest way to connect to the proxy network. You just install the toolbar and you can switch countries like you are able to beam yourself through the world! Just select the desired country, click apply and you’re in. Furthermore the toolbar allows you to emulate a mobile device, so you can check mobile sites easily too. The Geoview service gives you the possibility to view a web page from up to 8 geo-locations simultaneously in one screen.
2. Geosurf VPN connection
To change the entire machine’s IP address to gateways on the proxy server network you can use the Geosurf VPN connection. By installing the Geosurf VPN client you can for example view local content in IM clients or check local rankings using desktop software like Advanced Webranking. Unfortunately Geosurf doesn’t provide you a proxy list, so you are not able to scrape Google or check ranking switching through various proxies.
By the way: you can also connect your iphone or Android phone through VPN to the Geosurf network.
3. Geosurf Direct Connect API
To allow operation of automated scripts for downloading geo-targeted content to internal systems BIscience offers a direct connect API.
When you ask me what I think about Geosurf just two words come in my mind: easy and fast. Easy, because you just install a simple toolbar and you’re up and running in minutes. Also the use of the VPN connection is easy. Just install the VPN client and go!
All proxies were working perfectly and most of them are really fast too. Below you find the results of a little speed test I did. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to measure the China proxy. Probably something on my computer triggered the famous chinese firewall.
Country | Download in MBit/s | Upload in MBit/s | Ping in ms | Connections per min |
---|---|---|---|---|
No Proxy | 43,5 | 4,1 | 30 | 3432 |
Canada | 24 | 2,3 | 138 | 746 |
Costa Rica | 3,3 | 1,2 | 230 | 486 |
Denmark | 40,7 | 3,5 | 61 | 1768 |
Egypt | 9 | 1,3 | 243 | 440 |
France | 42,8 | 3,9 | 46 | 1878 |
Germany | 42,7 | 4 | 46 | 1898 |
Netherlands | 35,3 | 4 | 46 | 1910 |
Spain | 39,8 | 3,2 | 117 | 918 |
Switzerland | 42 | 3,8 | 54 | 1752 |
USA | 20,3 | 2,6 | 128 | 874 |
The full speedtest is available here.
Geosurf is an easy, reliable and fast proxy service. If you are working in international online marketing or media buying, it is defintely a tool you want to check out. If you need proxies to scrape / check Google, you should try another service, giving you multiple proxies.