Imagine walking into the Ace Hardware in Atlanta and a clerk greets you saying “Hello Ms. Smith. Denver sure is a long way to drive to get to our store”. You’d be really amazed that they knew you had come from Denver. In the real world that generally couldn’t happen unless the clerk was psychic. In the online world it can happen all the time with geolocation software.
Geolocation software utilizes a computer’s IP address to determine the visitor’s location. IP (Internet Protocol) is a computer’s version of the city/state of your home address. In other words, it can tell what city/state you’re from but not what street you live on. Ace Hardware can tell that you’re from Denver and they can serve you a completely different landing page than someone say, from Atlanta. This is a win-win for everybody involved. Visitors can get much more relevant information and websites can much better segment those visitors.
The software isn’t 100% accurate. Some Internet Service Providers, like AOL, use the location of their headquarters for all users IP addresses. Some users mask their own addresses. Even considering this, the accuracy is still in the low 90% range.
Mike Morawski, Chief Development Officer
