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Geo targeting

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Geo targeting (in internet marketing) is the method of determining the physical location of a website visitor and deliver different content to that visitor based his location, such as country, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, ISP or other criteria.

1 IP Targeting
2 Geographical Information Provided by the Visitor
3 IP delivery in SEO
4 Common Usage of Geo Targeting
5 References

IP Targeting

The IP address of the visitor is usually the attribute that is used to make the determination where the visitor is located. For this reason is geo targeting also referred to as IP targeting.^[1] With this information, web sites can target content, advertising, or route traffic depending upon the geographic locations of their visitors. Through web site requests for geographic information, a central database tracks an Internet user's traffic on the Internet whereby a profile can be generated. In addition to this profile, the central database can store visitor's preferences as to what content should be delivered to an IP address, the available interface, and the network speed associated with that IP address.^[2] The geographic location information of Internet users can be used for a variety of purposes. For instance, a position targeter can be associated with web sites to target the delivery of information based on the geographic location information. The web sites can selectively deliver content or advertising based on the geographic location of its visitors. The geographic location information can also be used in the routing of Internet traffic. A traffic manager associated with a number of web servers detects the geographic locations of its Internet visitors and routes the traffic to the closest server. The databases of geographic locations can contain other information that may be useful to web sites and other requestors. The databases, for instance, can serve as a registery for allowed content that may be delivered to a particular IP address or range of IP addresses. Thus, prior to a web site delivering content to an IP address, the web site may query the database to ensure that the delivery of the content is permitted. The databases may store network speeds of Internet users whereby a web site can tailor the amount of content delivered to an Internet user based in part of the bandwidth to that user. The databases may also store an interface of an Internet user whereby a web site can tailor the content and presentation for that particular interface. Other uses of the geographic location and of the systems and methods described herein will be apparent to those skilled in the art and are encompassed by the invention. The key question is obviously - where does that information come from? It might be the re-use of existing customer data. However some technologies do not rely on registry data, but instead deploy an accurate and sophisticated technological geo-location solution.

Geographical Information Provided by the Visitor

Geo targeting is also done based on geographical and other personal information that were provided by the visitor himself. A typical example for this type of geo targeting is the FedEx website at FedEx.com where users have to select their country location first and are then presented with different site content depending on their selection. The automated discovery of user city-level information based on IP addresses by trace routes, pings, 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 IP 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. This process is analogous to Internet search engine spidering in its enormity, yet requires far deeper layers of intelligence to keep the information about the constantly changing 4 billion-plus IP addresses current.

IP delivery in SEO

Main article: Cloaking

IP delivery for search engine optimization is the method of delivering different content to search engine spiders (also known as robots and crawlers) than to human visitors. The determination if the visitor is a known search engine spider is done based on the IP address. SEOs compare the visitors IP address with their list of IP addresses, which are known to be servers that are owned by a search engine and used to run their crawler applications (spiders). The delivery of different content to search engine spiders than to human visitors is called cloaking and against most search engines webmaster guidelines^[3]^[4]^[5] Although the search engine guidelines seem to imply that any type of cloaking is bad, are there cases where cloaking might be legitimate. The subject is very controversial and SEO experts continue to debate about when cloaking might be acceptable and when it is not.^[6] "Cloaking" via IP delivery works different than cloaking via "user agent". While the IP address spoofing is harder than user-agent spoofing and thus more reliable, is it also harder to keep the list of IP addresses used by search engines for their crawlers up-to-date. An outdated list with active crawler IP addresses missing enables the search engines to detect the cloaking and may result in a removal of the site from the search engines index.

Common Usage of Geo Targeting

Webmasters who want to serve local content on a global domain^[7]
Content Owners and Delivery Networks restrict streams based on the geographical information
Pay per click advertisement to have ads appear only to users who live in selected locations
Display advertisement where banner or other multimedia ads are selected to be displayed based on the visitors 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)