IP Geolocation

Understanding proxy geolocation

Every proxy server is hosted in a different physical location. This can speed connectivity when your location and/or the remote site location are geographically close.

It's good practice to check the location of every proxy by clicking on the name of the proxy server from your dashboard.

Information Sources

The Internet lists many databases, freely or commercially available, providing IP geolocation data.

But the accuracy of database information varies, so that in some cases the IP address returned for a proxy server does not reflect its actual geolocation.

Here are some of the factors involved:

• The remote site is using an out-of-date geo IP database

• The hosting provider does not share accurate geo IP locations with the geo IP database providers

• Some hosting providers may reassign blocks of IP addresses to a data center in a different geolocation from their original one. It can take some time for the geo IP databases to update the IP location so that it is accurately stated in responses to location testing.

As one possible result, a database could report a geo IP location as being in one country when in fact it is now in another country.

Many geo IP database providers are reliably up-to-date. But they do not receive change information promptly or simultaneously.

These delays in change reporting mean not all of them are likely to give you the same location data for a given site. And because these factors are out of our control, ProxyMesh cannot guarantee accurate geo IP locations. 

You can use services like  WhatIsMyIP.com to check the current geo IPs of a proxy server.  Make sure you check geo IP over HTTPS to get an accurate reading.

If you need accurate geo IPs, you will have to test a proxy server's IPs on your preferred remote site(s) by sending requests to the site you want to use it on.

This is always good practice, but especially important for IP geo location.

Best Practice for Accuracy

The most accurate geo IPs can be obtained using the  World Proxy with the X-ProxyMesh-Country header.

The World Proxy IPs are checked daily against a geo IP database that is updated weekly. This eliminates half the problem, and since the IPs are static, it is more likely that a remote site will accurately geo locate the IP, even if using an out-of-date geo IP database.

Other proxies that tend to be accurate for the US are us-il, us-ny, and us proxies.

Alternative Solutions for Time Lags

If time lags in reporting geo IP location changes interfere with your use cases, you may want to consider https://wonderproxy.com/ as an alternative, since that service doesn't use IPs that change locations.

IP Addresses Blocked by Geolocation

Some remote sites use geolocation to detect the location of IP addresses from a specific server. Geolocation may report some IP addresses as being in a different location from the one you intend.

For example, geolocation may report an overseas address although you intend a request to appear to originate in California. That may be because the hosting provider is located overseas. Although the proxy server belongs to ProxyMesh, the hosting provider is the one that provides the IP addresses.

ProxyMesh cannot control how the IPs are geolocated by other sites.

If your proxy's IP is blocked for this reason, see if you can resolve the problems through the steps below.

• On the dashboard, click on the proxy server that provides the address to bring up the Proxy Status page for that server.
• On the Proxy Status page, see if there is a note on the right side of the page for the server (for example, the US-CA proxy) with details about the location of the IP address.
• The note may look like this: "IP geocoding may say that the IPs are from overseas, because the hosting company is overseas. Use us-ny, us, or us-il if this is a problem."
• If such a note is present, try another server such as Illinois or New York that has more reliable geo locations in the US.
• Or, try the World Proxy with the X-Proxy Mesh-Country header.
• You might also consider WonderProxy as an alternative proxy service.