22nd Sep 2010 Last updated at 09:53

Using GeoLocation in a Website

What is GeoLocation?

GeoLocation provides businesses with a non-invasive way to determine geographical information about website visitors in real time. When a person visits your website, GeoLocation allows you to determine which country, region, city and postal code your visitor is coming from.

How does it work?

GeoLocation compares the website visitor’s IP address to a database of user-entered location data. It then retrieves their location and returns it in a form that can be used by the website.

The advantages of using GeoLocation in a website

Using this information allows you to target your website content to the visitors without ever having to ask them to input any information manually. For example:

If your website is available in multiple languages, you can automatically select the most likely language for you customer based on their geographical location.
If you owned a website for buying and selling used cars, you could automatically show the users cars for sale in their local area.
If you have an online form on your website that requires users to enter their town, county and country, you could automatically prefill this information for them.
If your website relies on advertisements to generate revenue, you could display ads relating to businesses in the visitors local area.
If your website only allows visitors from a certain area, you could use GeoLocation to aid in the security of your website.

Moving Forward

GeoLocation is one of a range of website services that IA Computing can integrate into your website. The aim of GeoLocation is to deliver relevant content and make your website easier to use thus increasing the number of sales/enquiries.

To increase revenue further, you could display similar products / services to ones a user has already bought on your website. You could graph the results to get a better idea of the locations of your visitors. The possibilities are endless!