Geolocation - Google not sure where you are

[Conor O'Nolan]

Until recently Google assumed I lived in Cork. Then suddenly I had moved to Dublin. I’m actually in Tramore, Co. Waterford. The fact that I, and many other Internet users are apparently bouncing around the country is playing havoc with what should be a powerful tool for local advertising.

I started using Adwords to attract potential customers in Waterford, Kilkenny and Wexford. Google offered me that option when setting up the advertising campaign. However I noticed that the adverts weren’t being shown much. Doing a reverse IP lookup revealed my IP as ras2.chf.cork.eircom.net.​

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When I added Cork to my advertising campaign, I started getting a response. I knew that people in Cork and maybe Kerry were seeing myadvert, but because I put Waterford in the title of my advert, I probably wasn’t getting clicks from them. Most importantly I was getting enquiries from businesses in Waterford.​

Recently my adverts stopped appearing so often, and I did a further check. Google assumed I was in Dublin, and presumebly all the other Eircom users in Waterford. So I modified my campaign to add Dublin to the list of regions where my adverts should be shown. Then my traffic increased again.​

For more details see Webwizards - Web Design Waterford​

 

[rooneydavid]

Its not Googles fault, they are going off a ip-location database that ISPs submit. I used to come up right where I live, but now I come up over an Eircom exchange. But Im not with Eircom, Im with Irish Broadband. It is down to ISPs to submit the information, Google just read what they get. And unless your IP is static your always going to jump around. We dont know how often these records are updated. Doing a ping or tracert will always show the local ISP network exchange. But that exchange could be some distance. Only in America does IP-location really work. Google doesnt say that there mapping is 100% for Ireland, no where is it 100%. The further down you go on a map the harder it is for it to be valid. Street level is very hard to get in Ireland with Googles Geocoding.

 

[Conor O'Nolan]

Quite right but..

I know it's the ISP IP allocation. We need to bang the drum about this so ISPs start doing something about it. For ADLS users it should be possible to identify by telephone exchange, if only IP numbers were allocated to exchanges.

 

[rooneydavid]

I agree with you, 100%. I am a big fan of the Google Maps. But Eircom is really screwing the system up here. A lot of IPs I have geo coded have come up on the same place. But are no where near. As soon as you go out site of dublin if you look up your ip you will be shocked to see your being mapped to the summit of a bloody mountain!

 

[Conor O'Nolan]

IP allocation Update

Eircom have changed their IP allocation so things are a bit more accurate.
For the last few weeks my IP has been showing up as Waterford.
Example 86-46-91-189.b-ras1.wtd.waterford.eircom.net

However, I've been trawling IP records to see whether Eircom have sub-divided the country sufficiently. However, so far I've found references to Cork, Limerick, galway, Portlaoise and Dublin. So I suspect they have divieded the country into regions for IP allocation. Better than before, but couldn't be that hard to allocate via STD codes which is reasonable geolocation fro this counrty.

 

[Conor O'Nolan]

New update on IP allocation and Google ads

Gave a talk at creativecamp Kilkenny at the weekend. Google now think I'm in Wexford. See here.

 

[Conor O'Nolan]

Further update

Since my last post, Google has me in Carlow and now in Kilkenny. Essentially the problem is that Eircom allocate all IP for the south-east from Waterford.

So Google should not be offering advertising targeted to counties in Ireland. It's not Googles fault that the IP issue is too vague, but it is their fault for pretending to offer a level of service that is highly inaccurate and of little value. They'd be better off offering to target ads by region, not county.

 

[jmcc]

Since my last post, Google has me in Carlow and now in Kilkenny. Essentially the problem is that Eircom allocate all IP for the south-east from Waterford.

So Google should not be offering advertising targeted to counties in Ireland. It's not Googles fault that the IP issue is too vague, but it is their fault for pretending to offer a level of service that is highly inaccurate and of little value. They'd be better off offering to target ads by region, not county.

As I explained in my replies on the Waterford OCC site thread, the problem is largely with the Irish ISPs. The ISPs generally don't break down the IP ranges in an easily detected geolocation manner. Google and most of the other major search engines use the RIPE/ARIN delegated IP ranges lists for part of their geolocation but those lists only have country level granularity and generally class C range resolution. To get more accurate data, it is necessary to process the IP whois data. This is a tricky thing to rely upon because some of it is out of date and wrong. There are ranges there that haven't been used for over ten years and are still included. The companies, such as Internet Eireann are gone. However Google may start using domain whois data to optimise things. In addition to tracking every domain in com/net/org/biz/info/ie/mobi/asia and about 2.5M .eu and 3.9M .co.uk, the databases here also have the IP ranges from the major IP registries. This provides more of a god's eye view of the problem that webdevs wouldn't necessarily have.

From what I remember, Google and the other SEs use a variety of sources to establish the location of the end user. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. Google and others have some interesting patents on geolocation that work well in theory. However Ireland is still a very fragmented market and it is a comparatively small one. Due to the screwed up IP mapping, even offering adverts by region is iffy. The only reliable one is to offer an Ireland one and use the site keywords and advertiser targeted keywords to narrow it down. It is an imperfect solution. But the reverse problem (mapping non .ie Irish sites on non-Irish IP ranges is even tougher. Google hasn't had much luck with solving that but the solution is really quite simple in cryptographic terms. It is just the dataset is very large.

Regards...jmcc