Handling SERP Tracking & Geo-Targeted Crawls Without Constant IP Blocks

[Vanika]

For anyone running SEO monitoring or localized SERP tracking at scale, one of the biggest issues you eventually run into is IP rate limiting or getting blocked altogether. This is especially true when trying to simulate searches from specific cities or ISPs — Google and other platforms pick up on non-residential patterns really fast.
In my experience, rotating proxies solve part of the issue, but when you need consistency (say, daily SERP snapshots from specific zip codes), you either need access to a massive pool of fresh IPs or you’ll burn through your resources quickly.
What’s worked well for me recently is switching to residential IPs with location-level targeting. I’ve been using Nsocks, which offers a wide pool of residential proxies across 195 countries, with support for both ISP and city-level filtering. It helped reduce my CAPTCHA rate significantly, and more importantly, the success rate on local SERP pulls went up without me needing to tweak user agents endlessly.
It’s not about avoiding detection completely — it’s about looking as human as possible, and residential IPs have helped bridge that gap for me. If you're doing similar work (SEO, scraping, local audits, rank tracking), it's something worth exploring.