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Websites
That Can Track Your Location
Each
time you connect to a Website, your computer
sends your IP address to the server, so
that the content of the Web page can be
delivered back to you. An IP address
is just a set of four pairs of numbers,
connected with dots. For example, one of
our server's IP addresses is 69.94.12.212.
When
your computer connects to a website, usually
the IP address is just used so that the
Web server knows what computer to send each
web page to. This has been true since the
beginning of the Web.
However,
using the PHP programming language, you
can take someone's IP address and check
it against a database of IP addresses, so
that you can know the geographic location
of the user, and then take specific actions
based on the request.
How
Does This Work?
- When
you visit a website, your computer sends
your IP address to the website.
- The
website takes the IP address, and looks
up the number in an online database.
- The
database will return a result (i.e. United
States)
- With
the country information, you can then
take further actions with the php programming
language to personalize the web page based
on the user's location.
Why
Care About Geolocation?
If
you are able to tell where someone is coming
from (i.e. US, Canada, or France), you can
tailor the site to your target audience.
One
site, DiscountDecorating.com, automatically
detects if you are coming in from the US,
Canada or Europe, and then based on this
information, personalizes the site:
- If
you're visiting the site from the US,
the site displays an animation that talks
about free shipping in the continental
US.
- If
you're visiting from Canada, the
site features a toll-free number that
works in Canada.
- And
for people visiting from outside the US,
the site informs visitors that they are
happy to ship worldwide.
Most
of the geolocation databases are very accurate
when it comes to country. They're
a lot less accurate for individual states,
and pretty inaccurate on a city-by-city
basis. Sometimes this is because a company
like Comcast's use IP connections in New
Jersey. That said, certain companies like
Google have very sophisticated geolocation
databases, but for smaller websites they
tend to be prohibitively expensive.
Speak
To Customers In Their Language
Another
way to use a geolocation database to determine
what language you should display to visitors
when they come to your site. Anyone
visiting from Mexico, for example, might
receive the Spanish language version of
the site, while someone in France would
receive the French version. We recommend
giving people an easy way to find their
way back to other languages, however, with
text links at the top of the page.
Summary:
With
an interactive language like PHP, you can
take a basic piece of information (like
an IP address), and combine it with the
power of an online database to create a
compelling, tailored experience. |
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