Glossary · Scraping & automation
IP rotation
The practice of cycling through many IP addresses across a workload so no single one accumulates a suspicious request count.
IP rotation is the strategy a rotating proxy implements: distribute your requests across a pool of addresses so that each one carries only a small share of the total. The point is to stay under the thresholds that trigger throttling and blocks, which are almost always counted per address.
How you rotate is a real decision. Per-request rotation maximises anonymity and suits stateless collection; timed or sticky rotation trades some of that for the continuity a session needs. The right cadence is the one that matches how the target counts and how much continuity your task requires.
Rotation is not a cure for a bad address. Cycling within a network that is already flagged just presents a series of distrusted IPs, which is why rotation and address quality are separate levers, you need both, not one standing in for the other.
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