IP2Location
This topic contains 11 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by Paolo 9 years, 5 months ago.
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Open Support TicketTagged: geolocation, ip2location
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July 22, 2015 at 3:47 am #46447
What are the chances of adding an option on geolocation to use an IP2Location database rather than requesting the user to give us permission to access their location?
IP2Location sells access to their database with monthly updates for only $199/year and they are pretty accurate.
It’d be nice to automatically use their location without prompting them.
Thoughts?
July 22, 2015 at 5:14 am #46448I don’t think that works that well.
My current IP’s location according to https://www.whatismyip.com/ is about 2000 km from where I am. I know I live in a big country, but I guess it is the same everywhere.
Geolocation used by GD is based on actual location of the device if it is a mobile device, so that will be heaps more accurate.July 22, 2015 at 1:59 pm #46497whatismyip.com uses digitalelement. I haven’t found them to be as accurate. They have me 7k from where I actually am – while ip2location has me within 400m. Perhaps their database is more accurate in the US as well.
From my experience ip2location offers a fair service at a fair price – where digitalelement is more expensive and maxmind is also pretty good but they can be more costly as well.
While I agree with you that doing a database lookup will never be as accurate as getting the physical location via the device, you have to look at the percentage of users who block their location by default or decline to provide it when prompted. It’s more than half.
Understanding this, having an ip database as a fall back at least gets us in the ballpark.
You have to think about user experience beyond that. With the goal of providing a “closer to” Yelp/Foursquare/Places-like experience, we should still have the ability to make a best-guess assumption for visitors who decline their location rather than simply choosing a default location which could put them on the other side of the planet.
Again, these are subscription services as well. They cost money and they use database resources. I understand that not all of your clients are super serious or have real revenues with their sites. But those who are will probably find this to be valuable.
I do think it’d be an interesting and valuable option for to at least provide this ability as a fallback when access to their device is declined.
I’d also be willing to look at paying for the mod to have it implemented into the core so that everyone could enjoy it.
Most of the heavy lifting has already been done because you have the lat/lon searching built in. Looking at their code instructions it’d be a simple call to the db to translate the ip to a more easily searchable number to decrease the tax on the database and then use the framework you already have.
Further, they have an affiliate program that pays a 10% lifetime referral fee. You guys could use it as an income center to continue to bolster revenues and continue to build out the app.
Be that as it may, all the GEOIP databases seem to work similarly – so giving users the option as to which service they want to use would probably also not be too big a task.
After understanding my position, and the real benefits to the user experience, I’m curious to get your thoughts.
John
July 22, 2015 at 2:48 pm #46505Hi,
for this kind of requests, we only consider ideas submitted here that are voted by a large number of members.
We don’t provide customization services.
Thank you
July 22, 2015 at 3:37 pm #46517This reply has been marked as private.July 22, 2015 at 3:46 pm #46518That was implemented already and it requires users to authorize sharing their location as per Google GeoLocation policies. (which is what we currently use) it’s different from your request.
Your request should be: GeoLocate users even if they refuse to share location (with alternative methods)… or something like that.
Thanks
July 22, 2015 at 5:21 pm #46537This reply has been marked as private.July 22, 2015 at 5:23 pm #46538No, there isn’t. The only way to know the user location, is that the user share it via GeoLocation service.
Thanks
July 22, 2015 at 5:32 pm #46540This reply has been marked as private.July 23, 2015 at 6:13 pm #46676OK, so would you assume that weedmaps is using some type of geoip database on the backend because they, like yelp and all the other players, are able to display a map that is local to the visitor. If so, I’ll submit the feature request. Again, I don’t think it’d be very difficult to implement if someone is willing to add and import the data to a specifically named table. If I develop this myself or hire a developer to do it would you be interested in the code to incorporate it into the core?
July 23, 2015 at 6:30 pm #46680Hi,
we would have to see if it’s done up to standard and if it wouldn’t make the plugin too heavy.
Thank you
July 23, 2015 at 6:32 pm #46681In any case it wouldn’t go into core (that is a single location plugin), but in advance search filters and should work only if multilocations is installed too.
Thx
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