IP geolocation

A website does not receive your coordinates along with your IP. It looks up a geolocation database, which records which ISP a block of addresses was issued to and in which country and city that block is usually used.

Databases identify the country reliably and the city approximately. Different databases can show different cities for the same address, especially for mobile carriers that serve whole regions.

Databases are updated with a delay. If an ISP moved a block of addresses to another city, some websites will see the old location for a while.

The My IP page shows what websites see about your address. Choosing a proxy country and city is described in the geo-targeting article.

What the My IP page shows about location

The My IP page takes data from a geolocation database and shows the country, an approximate city and region, and the ISP with its network number. Next to them it shows the time zone twice: by IP and by browser settings. These two lines are what most often reveal that the profile and the proxy were set up separately.

To see where databases place another address, paste it into the "Check any IP" field. This way you can compare several proxies in advance and keep the ones that land in the city you need.

Why the IP and the browser "live" in different places

IP geolocation is only one source. The browser also has the Geolocation API, which, with the user's permission, takes coordinates from GPS or nearby Wi-Fi networks, plus the system time zone and language. A proxy changes only the IP; everything else still comes from your computer.

A typical picture: an IP from Germany, the Kyiv time zone and a Ukrainian system language. For a website, that is three different countries. Set the time zone and language in the antidetect browser profile to match the proxy country, and do not give websites access to your location without a reason.

How to check geo on the website itself

Each website uses its own database, and the city in it may differ from what our page shows. So before work, open the target site and see which city it picked: in search, in delivery options, in the price currency.

If the site sees a neighboring city and you need a specific one, try a few addresses or widen the choice to the region. How to set a city in the username is described in the city targeting article.