I looked up a shop and it told me my local branch was in Edinburgh - despite living in Maidstone!
Humm I thought - I looked up my "WAN" address on my Virginmedia (cable) router - then put this
into
https://tools.keycdn.com/ - IP location finder and it tells me that I am in Edinburgh!
Crazy!
Can somebody else in Maidstone do the same please? Thanks
Scroll down on that page a bit and you'll see an explanation of how Geo IP location works - better than I can attempt to explain anyway.
It's unfeasible (and an unreasonable expectation) for ISPs to provide customers with an IP address that matches their (approximate) location due a number of reasons;
-how frequently dynamic IP addresses are assigned and unassigned from customers.
-how limited IP addresses are - i.e. they couldnt "reserve a pool for maidstone" for example.
-some ISPs employ CGNAT which means you could be on the same IP address as somebody else
The larger Geo IP databases (including Google) only pull data from ISPs or accept corrections every 2 to 4 weeks.
IP Address Geo Location should only really be used to determine the country the user is visiting from.
Good websites will pull other data to determine your location, i.e.
https://www.gps-coordinates.net/my-location will likely be a bit more accurate.
For example that one is almost the same street and I'm connected to a VPN that has a Geo IP location of London (I live 120 miles away).
