Primer on Web-Stat Geo-Targeting

Geo-Targeting

Fine-tune your content based on the visitor's location

What is Geo-Targeting ?

Geo-targeting is a tool provided with your Web-Stat account that allows you to automatically adapt and customize your web site's content to a visitor's geographical location ; there are many reasons why you might want to do this :

prevent SPAM
target the products you present to your audience
target the banners you display on your site so that they are only shown to visitors from certain states or countries
block people outside of your sales area from accessing your site (to cut down on useless support request for instance)

The list is long so we'll stop right here !

Here is what one of our clients had to say about Web-Stat Geo-targeting :

Thanks for your help on this. With the script you supplied I was able simply block the countries that I did not want to access my site. Since my site deals with camping and PopUp Campers, I blocked all countries that would not deal in those activities. I put up a nice screen that simply said “you can not access this site from your location”. This has blocked 90% of the spammer.
S.J.Haenn
PopUpPortal.com

And [ here ] is what another client says on her own site

What are the requirements ?

In order to use Geo-targeting, four conditions must be met :

You need to have a premium account (or a free trial) ; if necessary you can upgrade your current account from the Control Panel.
Your site must accept JavaScript. This is pretty much standard but some blogs or social network sites may not allow this language to be used.
You must know basic JavaScript. No fancy skills are necessary, but a minimum of JavaScript knowledge is needed.
You need to use the tool on your own site. Geo-targeting for your account will only work for the site address that you entered in the Control Panel's administrative section.

How do I implement Geo-Targeting ?

Once these conditions are met you can start targeting your content. The first thing to do is add a small piece of JavaScript code inside your HTML <head> area :

<script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.web-stat.com/geo_detect.pl?al####:#">
</script>

Note : the # characters will need to be replaced by numbers. The actual code for your account will be given to you on the next page.

The script above will create a JavaScript array variable named geo. That array will contain the following data which can then be accessed with JavaScript anywhere on your page to display the appropriate content.

The geo array variable contains 10 elements :

geo[0] : 2-letter country code - example : US (see list here)
geo[1] : country name - example : United States
geo[2] : 2-letter region/state code - example : SC
geo[3] : region/state name - example : South Carolina
geo[4] : city name - example : Charleston
geo[5] : zip code - example : 29200
geo[6] : latitude - example : 32.8255
geo[7] : longitude - example : -79.968
geo[8] : name of organization owning the IP# - example : AT&T
geo[9] : IP of visitor - example : 74.244.143.12
geo[10] : IP name if available - example : adsl-065-013-032-075.sip.mia.bellsouth.net (*) see note below

You can then use these elements in JavaScript to display customized content.

(*) Note : the last element of the array (IP name) will only be returned if you add the suffix :1 to the geo-targeting code (this will make the loading of the code a bit slower) :

<script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.web-stat.com/geo_detect.pl?al####:#:1">
</script>

Important ! When using geo-targeting you need to remember that the geographic information we use is derived from IP addresses. While we do everything to make it as precise and complete as possible, we can not, for technical reasons, have a 100% accuracy rate, so it is possible for the data contained in the geo array to sometimes be incomplete or inaccurate. You need to plan for that possibility in your application.

example 1

Imagine that you have two banner ads : one for California (banner_ca.gif) and one for Texas (banner_tx.gif). You want to display the Texas banner to visitors from Texas, the California banner to visitors from California, a generic banner (banner_generic.gif) to anyone else in the US and nothing at all for people who are not in the US. Here would be the code to add to your page at the place where you want the banner to appear :

<script language="JavaScript">
var geo = disp();
if (geo[0] == 'US'){
   if (geo[2] == 'CA'){
      document.write('<a href="http://site1.com"><img src="/banner_ca.gif"></a>');
   }
   else if (geo[2] == 'TX'){
      document.write('<a href="http://site2.com"><img src="/banner_tx.gif"></a>');
   }
   else {
      document.write('<a href="http://site3.com"><img src="/banner_generic.gif"></a>');
   }
}
</script>

example 2

You want your site to be accessible only from the US, Canada and the UK. You don't sell in other countries and you don't want people to write to support asking for your product when you can not fullfill their orders

<script language="JavaScript">
var geo = disp();
if (geo[0] != 'US' && geo[0] != 'CA' && geo[0] != 'GB'){
   alert('Sorry this site is only accessible from the USA, Canada and Great Britain');
   window.location = ('http://www.yahoo.com');
}
</script>

Get the Geo-Targeting code for your account

You are now ready to start using geo-targeting on your site. Please enter your login information below and we'll show you the exact code to place in your site's HTML