Location has always been important in almost all aspects of information-sharing. If you have a look at the yellow pages, you will notice that every business listing there also provides its location. The same applies to classifieds. Location adds a very important aspect to information – the where aspect!

Geolocation refers to the ability to deduce the geographic location of another party. This can be done using a GPS device, cellphones with inbuilt GPS modules, GSM cellphone signals or an IP address. What we are interested is the latter method, also known as IP Intelligence. This refers to the use of a user’s IP address to determine their location info such as the country, city, state/province, latitude, longitude, timezone and hostname.

In this series of 3 articles articles, I will show you:

• the benefits of implementing geolocation in you web application,
• free and paid geolocation APIs
• implement geolocation in your projects using PHP

Geolocation too has its problems

1. Database Accuracy

IP addresses are monitored and administered by countless regional institutions. For you to get geolocation data, it would mean that you had to query each institution directly. Lucky for us, some companies like Maximind have specialized in collecting this IP addresses and consolidating them into databases that you can query from your website. One thing to question however, is the accuracy of these databases as the companies themselves claim they range from 80 to 97%.

2. ISPs like AOL

Large internet service providers, such as AOL, are complicating the matter even further because they authenticate all users on US servers and hand out IP addresses from their US address pool, no matter where a user dials in from.

3. Loss of User Privacy

Unfortunately, most users are completely oblivious to the fact that their IP addresses are being collected and their current locations being used without their permission. Am really not sure about how many users would oppose to this, but am sure this is something to think about in your next project. You can probably tell your user why your getting their geolocation data and how they benefit from this. And that is what I talk about next.

Improve your websites using geolocation

1. International website localization

The Problem: Have you ever tried to browse the website of a global multi-national website and instead of going directly to the home page you are met with a page asking you to choose your location and language? A good example of such is the Emirates website. This is somewhat not user-friendly.

Solution: Geolocation through IP Intelligence comes to the rescue. You can get the user’s IP Address and from this get their location and display the relevant regional website. This will conveniently remove the extra step of the user manually selecting their country hence improving user-friendliness.

2. Targeted Advertising and Email Marketing

The Problem: When running your advertsing and online/email marketing campaigns, the goal is to reach as many target users as possible. This is why most campaigns up until now are run based on audience demographic such as gender, age, interests etc.

There is however a big loophole here; imagine you run an a store that is based in Nairobi, Kenya and you also ships some of its products worldwide. You wouldn’t want to advertise to a client 5000 miles away a product that cannot be shipped worldwide. Also, you wouldn’t want to advertise to local Kenyan shoppers a product that is targeted to the worldwide market.

Solution: Geolocation through IP Intelligence comes to the rescue again. You can get the user’s IP Address and from this get their location. From here you can target your advertising and marketing campaigns appropriately using by location. Mailchimp, has added geolocation tracking to its online email marketing service.

3. Fraud detection in e-commerce sites

The Problem: E-commerce sites and online retailers usually deal with money, with which everyone is very careful. Due to this, such websites need to ensure high standards of security. Many such websites have fallen victim to scams whereby a buyer uses a stolen credit card to buy items from your store and ships them to another location.

Solution: Geolocation through IP Intelligence comes to the rescue yet again. You can get the user’s IP Address and from this get their location. With the user’s location, all you need to do is to match the geolocation to the location they entered in their shipping address. If there is a mismatch, say the client entered their shipping address as Kenya yet the geolocation shows they are in Nigeria, then there is a strong possibility of fraud. In this case you can also match the user’s postal code or area code where available

4. Of Currency, Weather and Timezones

The Problem: Some websites have the need to display a currency converter, weather or timezone of a specific place; particularly tourism and e-commerce websites. If a user is in Kenya, am pretty sure they would prefer their currency be shown in Kenya Shillings rather than US Dollars or any other currency for that matter. The same applies to timezones.

Solution: Geolocation through IP Intelligence comes to the rescue yet again. You can get the user’s IP Address and from this get their location. Once you have the users location you can match it to the relevant currency, timezone and country. Again, this improves user-friendliness on our website.

That’s all for now folks

If you were lost about geolocation or you haven’t adopted it yet, I hope this post has shed some light and helped you in some way. So, did you benefit from this post? Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Let me know what ways you can think of implementing geolocation in a website. Lets share in the comments section

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Watch out for the next post in this series which will feature the complete review of Geolocation APIs, comparisons and recommendations