Customising The Internet - Geotargeting

It's not the most advanced technological concepts on the internet today but geotargeting is probably one of the most used

. In fact you'd be unlikely to use the internet for very long without being the subject of some sort of geotargeting.

Very simply geotargeting is the principle of targeting what you see or can do on the internet depending on your location. As soon as you use a search engine or an advanced web site, you'll be the subject of geotargeting.

When you fire up a search engine and search for something, the location you are in will be taken into account. Which is all perfectly sensible, after all if I'm in the UK and search for window cleaners, I don't want to see a firm listed from downtown Chicago !

The search engine will tailor my search results depending on where I am, so if all works well I should get results which are more applicable to my area. It's not the best system but it definitely has it's uses.

Perhaps the more annoying use of geotargeting is when the technology is used to modify or block what you see. For instance if you want to play online roulette, you'll be blocked from many casino sites if you are in the US due to American legislation on online gambling.

Also when you try and access certain media content from different locations you could get blocked. For instance if I try and access Hulu or ABC.com from a non-US computer I won't be able to view their shows. Similarly I won't be able to access UK BBC programmes if I'm outside the UK or at least my computer is.

So how does it work, well to be honest the technology is rather dated and is often unreliable. When you visit a web site, your IP address is presented to the web server as part of the underlying communication. All the web site will then do is run a short script which will look up this IP address in a database, and decide which country you originate from.

The problem is that many of the databases which lists which countries have which ranges are incorrect. Unfortunately there are many different databases of IP addresses and many of these are out of date or just plain wrong. You will often have a specific network range appearing as registered in multiple countries. Of course sometimes this can be beneficial to the user or sometimes just plain annoying!

by: John Greenhoff

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