How Do They Know Where I Live?

Have you gone to a website where the greeting changes to, "Hello, to all visitors from [state name]" when you view the page? Or maybe you have logged into a website located in Australia, where they knew it was lunch time in your part of the world? How do they do this? How does eBay know to load their English version of their auction site, rather than the Japanese? Geolocation.

Geolocation by IP address is the technique of determining a user's geographic latitude and longitude; which, in turn, provides the city, region and nation by comparing the user's IP address with known IP locations of Internet servers and routers. In fact, you can add your lat/long in your web site metatags to make finding your shop easier for your customers.

Other possible applications for geolocation by IP address exist for blogs, chat programs, user communities, forums, distributed computing environments, security, urban mapping and network configurations.

Determining geographic locations using Internet Protocol(IP)addresses offers improved capabilities to web users. When you search, your IP address may be read so that local stores are returned first, after the paid ads, that is. When you type your zip code into a weather website to get your local weather, you are using a form of geolocation.

Marketing using region-specific advertising, where you can target as narrowly as a certain postal code, is becoming more and more important. Another application that uses geolocation by IP address is web statistics. When I view the statistics on either of my websites, it gives me a breakdown by country of my visitors.

Probably the most important use of geolocation is for online security. If you bank on line, you may be asked to prove your identity by providing a PIN that is sent to your email account on file with the bank. This is triggered by your login which is identified as being from an IP address that is different than your normal one.

Geolocation is a sign of the times in which we live. Do you want to know your geolocation? Find your lat/long here at GeoCode.

Find your IP address here at WebYield.net. This works even if you have a firewall and security.