There’s often a lot riding on your ability to locate the user with confidence. On some level, it makes sense that we would think about it this way because a lot of applications of IP geolocation are based on the premise of finding an end-user’s true location in the world. When we start thinking about IP geolocation, we might imagine a process of pinpointing, with some accuracy, the location of an end-user on the internet. Finally, we’ll consider a breadth of IP intelligence data that can be used in tandem with geolocation to answer key questions about IP addresses that you can leverage to get the most value for your applications. We’ll also dive into some of the considerations that shape the kind of data we produce and how we face questions of coverage, precision, and accuracy in order to deliver the most valuable data possible to our users. In the coming months, we’ll go into more detail about the specific methods we use to measure accuracy and gauge confidence in our geolocation data. In light of these considerations, we’ll develop a deeper understanding of the constraints and opportunities for IP geolocation.
In this post, we’ll talk about some common assumptions about how IP geolocation works and contextualize those assumptions in light of the structure of the internet and the distribution of the IP space across geographical regions. This month we’ll cover the basics, answering questions about how accurate IP geolocation is and why. As we approach our twentieth anniversary, we’ll be offering some insights into the industry. With nearly two decades in the business of IP geolocation, we spend a lot of time thinking about accuracy, but, as with all things big data, a simple question usually has a complex answer.