PDA

View Full Version : Google Location targeting


misterjezmond
10-09-2007, 10:34 AM
I am well aware of the issues surround the effectivness of Google Location targeting but we have been using it for a number of clients and it has proved successful.

I am actually trying to get some stats on the number of ISPs with locations in London and Bletchley.

Looking at stats from analytics it shows a huge proportion of users coming from these two areas.

Whilst that makes sense for London seeing as it makes up about 13% of the UK population. Bletchley naturally doesn't account for that many people.

So does any one have any stats about what percentage of ISPs have servers based in these two locations?

Tricky one I know!

charlesv
10-09-2007, 04:41 PM
Max Mind has the ip to location database, along with other information like isp. I have found this database to be fairly close if not the same as googles.

http://www.maxmind.com/app/city

It could simply be that Bletchley is the mailing address of the company who owns the ip addresses. ip to location is not exact.

Charles

abbottsys
10-09-2007, 05:16 PM
My quick guess - BT has a large routing center close to Bletchley (Milton Keyes) and many IP location traces can only resolve as far as that center - giving "Bletchley" as the geo-location of a massive BT IP address space - irrespective of the real location of the user. We had a similar problem with AOL here in the States a while back - with google IP locating tons of folks to Virginia (AOL switching center) but then, suddenly, google seemed to fix that problem.

misterjezmond
10-09-2007, 05:53 PM
Yes I knew that BT must have had a routing centre close by! thanks for confirming!

Of course we always caveat that geotargeting isn't 100% effective! Does anyone have any info on the average % of users who's true location is detectable by IP?