WordPress Rankie Plugin tracks WordPress rankings on Google so it monitor keyword positions on Google and it should save you at least $30/mo using online web services that charges you for tracking search engine serps.

The plugin support using proxies on the format ip:port or ip:port:username:password but is it a must to use proxies?

Using an anonymous proxy should hide your original server ip from Google and at the eyes of Google it is not your server at all so it works as a middle man who understand the request and go query Google for you then send you the reply back

At Rankie I have made it not to query Google more than once in two minutes frame which is safe and not brute and Google will not get annoyed from this rate so it is not a must and optional to use proxies

+ The Kewyword research feature of Rankie don’t use your server ip but it uses your computer ip as it is built so it query Google from javascript and get suggestions, parse them and use so you don’t need to worry about it.

Note: if you are on a shared hosting your server ip is shared with lot’s of other users may be some of them abuse Google so it may ban this ip from accessing it’s servers

How to use proxies with Rankie?

Go to the settings and add the proxies one per line on the specified format

Here is an exmaple from Log for a successfull rank update using a prxoy

here is another one with a non working proxy

What to consider?

1- don’t use public proxy servers shared over the internet  like what we can get from hidemyass are not reliable because:

1. It is used by lot’s of users all over the world so they may die soon
2. it is shared so may be some users abused Google using it

2- use proxies with a port that is open for outgoing connection on your server

although at your local machine the most connections to proxies will work but at your server most of them will not work due to firewall security so when using a proxy make sure it works at your server or simply use proxies with the port 80 which is open by all servers as it is used for HTTP Traffic

3- use private proxy servers that which ips are used exclusively by you.

Conclusion: using proxies is not required because queries rate is reasonable and if you want to use them don’t use public shared ones.