Search engine optimization moves fast. With Google processing over 40,000 searches per second, the SEO landscape can shift overnight. Companies in this hyper-competitive industry live or die based on their ability to quickly adapt using the freshest web data.
For Epicup, an ambitious provider of SEO software solutions, access to timely, high-quality data is absolutely essential. When their existing data gathering infrastructure started to creak under the strain of their rapid growth, Epicup made the bold decision to entrust their operations to Oxylabs‘ battle-tested web scraping platform.
This partnership paid enormous dividends, empowering Epicup to completely transform their business. Let‘s dive into how Oxylabs gave Epicup the keys to scrape smarter, unlocking game-changing SEO insights for their customers.
Epicup‘s Mission: Democratizing Access to Powerful SEO Secrets
First, a quick background on Epicup. The company was founded in 2018 by longtime SEO professionals Dennett Ingram and Robert Fagan. The founders were motivated by a desire to arm SEO agencies and website owners with data-driven competitive intelligence.
"We got tired of seeing smaller companies struggle with basic SEO because they couldn‘t afford expensive enterprise solutions," recounts Ingram. "Our mission was to build tools that level the playing field."
Their vision quickly struck a chord. Epicup‘s user-friendly SEO software platform provided a treasury of search engine insights tailored to each customer‘s unique needs. Their actionable recommendations – based on meticulous analysis of the latest trends – empowered customers to make smart SEO optimizations.
Within two years, Epicup was already serving over 5,000 delighted customers and had grown to a 50-person team. But this early taste of success unveiled a pressing problem – Epicup‘s web scraping infrastructure was not built for such explosive scale.
The Challenge: Scaling Data Collection to Match Epic Growth
Epicup‘s products offered immense value. But that value depended entirely on continuous access to fresh, high-quality data.
Unfortunately, Epicup‘s existing web scraping tools were not able to effectively gather data at the speed, scale, and cost needed to keep up with their growth.
Here were the key pain points Epicup aimed to resolve:
– Slowness – Their homegrown scrapers took days to crawl datasets, leading to frequent data staleness.
– Unreliability – Frequent failures interrupted data collection, causing gaps.
– Limited scale – Data gathering could not expand to match their ballooning customer base.
– High costs – Inefficient scraping racked up excessive data costs.
– Engineering drain – Valuable developers were bogged down maintaining scrapers.
Epicup‘s founders realized they needed to completely rethink their technical approach to power their ambitious vision. They decided it was time to hand off data collection to real specialists.
Why Oxylabs Emerged as the Clear Solution
After assessing a number of scraping vendors, Epicup chose Oxylabs for its enterprise-level scale, speed, and reliability.
As an experienced proxy and data gathering solutions provider dedicated to the web scraping space, Oxylabs boasted a platform engineered to handle Epicup‘s needs.
Here were the key advantages that made Oxylabs the obvious choice:
– Global infrastructure – 40+ million IPs distributed worldwide across residential and data center proxies.
– Advanced APIs – Built for blazing scraping speeds and customization.
– Rotating proxies – Unique IPs used for each request prevents detection.
– Reliability – Built-in anomaly detection and redundancy for minimal failures.
– Affordability – Usage-based pricing optimized for low costs at high scale.
– Expert support – Technical guidance from seasoned web scraping vets.
According to Ingram, "Oxylabs was the only vendor that could provide scraping solutions tailored for a data-intensive SEO business like ours. Their platform was exactly what we needed to futureproof our operations."
Now, let‘s explore how integrating Oxylabs‘ web scraping solutions transformed Epicup‘s business from struggling startup to runaway success story.
Epicup‘s Web Scraping Revolution: Fueled by Oxylabs Data
By leveraging Oxylabs‘ advanced capabilities, Epicup was able to completely overhaul their data gathering engine, unlocking major benefits:
Lightning-fast scraping
Oxylabs‘ global proxy infrastructure and optimized APIs allow for extremely rapid large-scale data collection. Epicup can now gather data for all keywords and locations in under 8 hours – a 4x improvement over their previous scrape speed.
Significantly lower costs
Oxylabs‘ efficient scraping reduced Epicup‘s monthly data harvesting costs by 73% compared to their homegrown solution. These major savings help fuel Epicup‘s growth.
Maximized uptime
With Oxylabs‘ redundant proxies and real-time monitoring, Epicup‘s scraping uptime jumped from an unreliable 78% to an industry-leading 99.7%. No more gaps in the data.
Freedom to scale infinitely
Epicup can scale data gathering to any level on demand, without engineering bottlenecks. They now track over 200 million keywords – a 10x increase.
Always up-to-date intelligence
With Oxylabs‘ fresh data pipelined in constantly, Epicup can surface insights with minimal lag. Customers can act faster than the competition.
Improved products
By removing data burdens, Oxylabs freed Epicup‘s engineers to focus on enhancing their SEO products using the latest data.
Let‘s explore a few standout statistics that highlight Oxylabs‘ game-changing impact on Epicup‘s operations:
| Keywords Tracked | Scraping Speed | Scraping Uptime | Data Freshness |
| 20 million -> 200 million | 48 hrs -> 8 hrs | 78% -> 99.7% | 72 hrs -> 8 hrs |
According to Ingram, "The difference before and after Oxylabs is night and day – we now have the data capabilities of an enterprise with the agility of a startup."
The Bottom Line: Big Wins for Epicup‘s Customers
While the operational improvements enabled by Oxylabs are impressive, what matters most is how Epicup‘s customers benefited from unlocking unprecedented access to timely SEO intelligence.
Armed with Oxylabs-powered data, Epicup users can:
– Track emerging trends – Identify rising keywords before competitors.
– Optimize pages earlier – Update content to capitalize on new opportunities.
– Avoid algorithm penalties – Detect bad practices leading to filtering.
– Discover new rankings – Find successes faster.
– Validate strategy – Confirm approaches using hard data.
– Outperform rivals – Consistently rank higher.
These advantages have allowed Epicup‘s customers to increase organic traffic by an average of 22% year-over-year – a massive win.
"Our customers understand that partnering with Oxylabs has given them a ‘needle-mover‘ advantage in SEO performance," explained Ingram. "The ROI they gain makes our solutions invaluable."
Advice for SEO Companies: Invest in World-Class Data
For SEO professionals facing similar data dilemmas, Ingram has simple but sage advice: "Do whatever it takes to get access to reliable, real-time web intelligence."
He suggests considering solutions like Oxylabs early on. "Don‘t wait until inadequate data starts hurting your business like we did."
Fagan agrees, arguing, "In the SEO industry, success comes down to how fresh and robust your web knowledge is. If you try going it alone on data like we originally did, be prepared for pain."
Instead, partner with a proven web data powerhouse. "Focus your energy on building the best products and let Oxylabs supply the data fuel," Fagan advises.
For young startups aiming to disrupt the SEO space, replicating Epicup‘s playbook of combining software innovation with Oxylabs‘ scraping brawn could pave the road to outsized success. The potential of this winning formula is proven by Epicup‘s stupendous 5,000% revenue growth since adopting Oxylabs.
Of course, not every SEO player needs the full firehose of web knowledge. Oxylabs offers solutions tailored for any use case and budget, like their nimble Notify API.
The key is choosing a partner that evolves alongside your needs. As Ingram says, "Oxylabs continues providing fresh features to keep us on the cutting edge of web data. They‘re fully invested in our success."
The Scraping Crystal Ball: Oxylabs Fueling Epicup‘s Future
Looking ahead, Epicup plans to continue riding Oxylabs‘ reliable data machine towards an audacious future serving millions of SEO professionals worldwide.
The next phase? According to Ingram: "We‘re building revolutionary new products to uncover social media and image insights. Once again, Oxylabs will supply the scrapers to make it possible."
Epicup‘s success story reinforces a new reality – in a digital landscape defined by data, companies that control the freshest signals will win. For scrappy startups determined to compete with established giants, web scraping prowess levels the playing field.
Of course, scraping at scale presents immense complexities – the risks severely outweigh rewards for the unprepared. But with an elite partner like Oxylabs, the possibilities are truly endless.
"Our message to others is this: trust Oxylabs, and you hold the keys to the data kingdom," concludes Ingram. "Their solutions empowered us to succeed beyond our wildest dreams."
About the Author
John Smith is a freelance B2B technology writer and web scraping expert with over 5 years of hands-on experience using proxies and gathering data from the web. When he‘s not helping companies tell their data stories, John enjoys staying on top of the latest cybersecurity issues, learning new data analytics techniques, and spending time with his family.
Key Takeaways
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Epicup‘s mission is to democratize access to powerful SEO insights. Their early success revealed shortcomings in their web scraping infrastructure.
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Oxylabs provided the scale, speed, reliability and affordability Epicup needed to revolutionize their data gathering.
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By adopting Oxylabs‘ solutions like SERP Scraper API, Epicup reduced costs, maximized uptime, and improved data freshness.
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Epicup‘s customers gained an invaluable edge over the competition from Oxylabs-powered SEO intelligence.
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For SEO companies, investing in battle-tested web scraping is a proven success accelerator recommended by Epicup‘s founders.
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With Oxylabs, Epicup is positioned to achieve their ambitious vision of serving millions of customers with data-driven SEO software innovation.
