geomarketing In marketing, geomarketing (also called marketing geography) is a discipline that uses geolocation (geographic information) in the process of planning and implementation of marketing activities.

and

internet marketing The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, geotargeting is the method of delivering different

content Content or contents may refer to: Media * Content (media), information or experience provided to audience or end-users by publishers or media producers ** Content industry, an umbrella term that encompasses companies owning and providing mas ...

to visitors based on their

geolocation Geopositioning, also known as geotracking, geolocalization, geolocating, geolocation, or geoposition fixing, is the process of determining or estimating the geographic position of an object. Geopositioning yields a set of geographic coordinates ...

. This includes country, region/state, city, metro code/ zip code, organization,

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

, or other criteria. A common usage of geotargeting is found in

online advertising Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...

, as well as

internet television Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air a ...

with sites such as

iPlayer BBC iPlayer (stylised as iPLAYER or BBC iPLAYER) is a video on demand service from the BBC. The service is available on a wide range of devices, including mobile phones and tablets, personal computers and smart televisions. iPlayer services de ...

and Hulu. In these circumstances, content is often restricted to users geolocated in specific countries; this approach serves as a means of implementing digital rights management. Use of

proxy server In computer networking, a proxy server is a server application that acts as an intermediary between a client requesting a resource and the server providing that resource. Instead of connecting directly to a server that can fulfill a reques ...

s and virtual private networks may give a false location.

Geographical information provided by the visitor

In geotargeting with

geolocation software In computing, Internet geolocation is software capable of deducing the geographic position of a device connected to the Internet. For example, the device's IP address can be used to determine the country, city, or ZIP code, determining its geogr ...

, the

is based on geographical and other personal information that is provided by the visitor or others.

Content by choice

Some websites, for example FedEx and UPS, utilize geotargeting by giving users the choice to select their country location. The user is then presented with different site or article content depending on their selection.

Automated different content

In internet marketing and geomarketing, the delivery of different content based on the geographical

and other personal information is automated. A good example is the Ace Hardware website at www.acehardware.com. The company utilizes geolocation software to power the “My Local Ace” section of its website. Based on a site visitor's location, the website's

online locator service An online locator service (also known as location finder, store finder, or store locator, or similar) is a feature found on websites of businesses with multiple locations that allows visitors to the site to find locations of the business within pro ...

can show the visitor how many stores are in their area, as well as a city-level locator map to help the customer find the store closest to their address. Different offers may be presented depending on local conditions, e.g. weather, local competitors, local trends, etc.

IP spidering

The automated discovery of user person/organisation/city-level geolocation information based on

es by

traceroute In computing, traceroute and tracert are computer network diagnostic commands for displaying possible routes (paths) and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The history of the route is recorded as th ...

ping Ping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Ping, a domesticated Chinese duck in the illustrated book '' The Story about Ping'', first published in 1933 * Ping, a minor character in ''Seinfeld'', an NBC sitcom * Ping, a c ...

s, and a combination of other tools and methods is far more advanced. It is dependent on the pre-analysis of the entire IP address space. There are more than 4 billion possible IPv4 addresses, and detailed analysis of each of them is a Herculean task, especially in light of the fact that IP addresses are constantly being assigned, allocated, reallocated, moved, and changed due to routers being moved, enterprises being assigned IP addresses or moving, and networks being built or changed. In order to keep up with these changes, complex algorithms, bandwidth measurement and mapping technology, and finely tuned delivery mechanisms are necessary. Once all of the IP space is analyzed, each address must be periodically updated to reflect changes in the IP address information without invading a user's privacy. This process is similar in scale to the task of Web spidering.

IP delivery in SEO

Websites utilize IP delivery for

search engine optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or " organic" results) rather than dire ...

(SEO) in a method called

cloaking Cloaking is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user's browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the Us ...

. SEOs maintain a list of IP addresses that are known to be servers owned by a search engine and used to run their crawler applications (spiders). The visitor's IP address is compared to the list, and if it is determined to be a search engine spider, it is presented with different web page content from human visitors. Cloaking is against most search engines' webmaster guidelines.Google webmaster guidelines
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Although search engine guidelines imply that any type of cloaking is bad, there are instances when the practice may be legitimate. The subject is very controversial and continues to be debated by SEO experts. "Cloaking" via IP delivery is different from cloaking via " user agent". While

IP address spoofing In computer networking, IP address spoofing or IP spoofing is the creation of Internet Protocol (IP) packets with a false source IP address, for the purpose of impersonating another computing system. Background The basic protocol for sending ...

is harder and more reliable than user-agent spoofing, it is also harder to keep the list of IP addresses used by search engines for their crawlers up-to-date. An outdated list of active crawler IP addresses enables the search engines to detect cloaking and may result in a removal of the site from the search engine's index.

Common uses

*Content Localization:ClientSideNews, Nov/Dec 2010 issue, Page 6 “You Can Really Do That? – The Power of Geolocation Technology”
/ref> Webmasters who want to serve local content on a global domain.Internet IP Address Allocation by Country 2008 Report
Study showing the IP address distribution of the Internet in 2007Internet IP Address Allocation by Country 2009 Report
Study showing the IP address distribution of the Internet in 2008 *

Copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

owners and delivery networks restrict streams based on the geographical information. *

Pay per click Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked. Pay-per-click is usually ...

advertisement to have ads appear only to users who live in selected locations. *

Display advertisement Digital display advertising is online graphic advertising through banners, text, images, video, and audio. The main purpose of digital display advertising is to post company ads on third-party websites. A display ad is usually interactive (i.e. ...

where banner or other multimedia ads are displayed based on the visitor's location. * The use of connection speed data correlated to IP address to tailor content. * Online analytics identify live the correlation of city-level geography, connection speed data, and certain demographic data to IP addresses. * Enhanced performance networks provide superior customer targeting to advertisers. * Fraud prevention identifies suspicious payment transactions live by correlations between IP address and additional information (billing records, email header).Credit Card Fraud Prevention Tips
Top 10 Tips to Prevent Online Credit Card Fraud for Merchants * City advertising by advertising on web sites with extensive content related to particular cities. Such websites can connect large city audiences with products/services for sale in those cities. Surfers searching for information about particular cities find adverts on such web sites as a result of city name related searches rather than product/service keyword searches. In this way businesses, e.g. shops, restaurants, can advertise and reach out to consumers located in the real-world localities of their product/service offerings. * Content based on local time using IP geolocation. * Use of a

content distribution network A content delivery network, or content distribution network (CDN), is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. The goal is to provide high availability and performance by distributing the service spatially rel ...

to serve data from a nearby server. * Website Personalization where website content is changed and replaced based on visitor location. * One-to-one or household IP targeting surfaces display advertisements to individual buildings or homes. * Content / Ad verification - changing IPs for content compliance or ad verification.

References

{{SearchEngineOptimization Geodemography Geographic position Market research Market segmentation Online advertising