[Gllug] How does a web site know where I am geographically

[Ryan Cartwright]

Richard Jones wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 08:42:40PM +0000, John Winters wrote:
> 
>>Any suggestions?
> 
> 
> In theory you can map IP addresses to their geographical location.  A
> good place to start is to look at where [physically] the IP address
> was allocated in the first place.  This is known in internet marketing
> as "geo-targeting".  Of course as many people on this list will be
> quick to point out there are many many pitfalls and inaccuracies in
> this approach (eg. what about IP addresses which have been reassigned
> since originally allocated?  What about people dialing ISPs in
> different countries?  What about people with static IPs on the move?
> What about global ISPs like AOL?  What about people ssh-ing to their
> university computers in the US?)

Once you take those inaccuracies into account it can prove useful in 
some circumstances.
We're a charity and it's useful for us to know where our visitors are 
viewing from - at least by country. That way we can approach funders 
armed with knowledge that we serve a percentage from different 
countries. The inaccuracies you mention are nominal for our needs.
We simply have a piece of php which records the ip address of the 
visitor along with some basic stuff like session duration and pages 
visited. Our stats reporting scripts use the iptocountry database ( 
http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/ ) which is updated pretty 
regularly - to turn ip addresses into countries.

Cheers
Ryan
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