SEO teams use proxies to see real local SERPs, monitor competitors, collect data safely and protect their main office IPs.

Without proxies, rank tracking and SERP research quickly become biased or blocked. Search engines and target sites see repeated requests from one office IP, while local results differ by country, city and even neighborhood.
Residential proxies are usually the safest choice when Google results need to look local and human. Datacenter proxies can still work for low-risk tasks, but they are more likely to be filtered or challenged.
No. They do not change rankings by themselves. They help you collect cleaner data and work safely at scale.
Residential proxies are usually better when local accuracy and lower block rates matter.
Because you will bias the results, trigger blocks faster and lose location-specific accuracy.