1) I have the system set up on my server now and it is working. Right now, Enable Proxies is set to "Yes", but I have not added any proxies to the Proxy Manager. How is the system currently grabbing the data in this scenario? Is it using an API, a proxy in India or my own IP? Is it scraping the data (or simulating a user)?
If you enabled proxy and not added any proxies, then it will take crawl data from your IP. If you are adding many sites to seo panel then better to use paid proxies.
Currently seo panel is scraping the data from search engines.
2) How many ranking positions are retrieved? 100? 200?
Currently it is set to 100 by default but you can change it from database
3) I am concerned that I run the risk of getting my IP banned by using this tool. Is this a possibility? For example, I have the software installed on the domain of my main corporate site and I have 100+ other websites on the same server. If there is any risk, I could install this somewhere else. I have just heard that when you work with proxies, that you should plan on getting IP's banned?
If you are using more than 10 sites and 100 keywords its better to use proxies for generating reports. or you need to increase the crawling delay from system settings to 5 or 10 minutes depending on amount of sites. I recommend proxies in this case.
4) Does this use any of the API's from the search engines or just proxies to simulate a user (scrape the results)? If it uses the Google API, does it use SOAP, which is no longer being supported or is it using the new Ajax API?
Currently Seo Panel is using scraping method because API is not supported by google now.
5) When proxies are used, how does it cycle through the proxy IP's? First query goes to one IP, then the next query goes to the next IP and so on, or does it use the first proxy to go through all the queries for one website... (I just need to understand this process, since I have to explain it to my client)
When proxies are enabled, During each crawl(for a keyword in one search engine) it will take a random proxy from active proxy list. Thats why one proxy IP will not be overloaded.
6) I saw the links for the 2 resources for proxies. Are paid proxies better than the free proxies?
Its better to use paid proxies because they will be up for most of the time.
6) What time of day does the automatic cron run that updates the rankings?
Thats depends on your settings in cpanel crontab, normally it works on midnight(12 am) of a day.
5) Are there any plugins that address the issue of different types of users with different positions? I am looking for 3 additional roles... (SuperAdmin, Account Manager and user)... Those are in addition to my account access.
We already developed a seo panel with these 3 additional roles. We can provide you it for some donation.
Please contact us through - http://www.seopanel.in/contact/ , so that we can show you that version.