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2/ There are two kinds of geocoding: "forward" geocoding is turning human addresses into geographic coordinates (latitude, longitude).

Example: "Philipsbornstr. 2, 30165 Hanover, Germany" -> 52.3877830, 9.7334394

3/ "reverse" geocoding: is the opposite - turning geo coordinates into addresses and location info.

We have a detailed guide to all aspects of reverse geocoding on our site:
https://opencagedata.com/reverse-geocoding

4/ So what is IP geolocation? It's the process of converting an IP (Internet Protocol) address like 87.142.190.88 into location info.

You can roughly think of an IP address as a computer's address on the internet.

More background here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address

5/ How can we turn an IP address into location info?

Well, we (OpenCage) can't. We don't do IP geolocation, we only do geocoding.

But many companies provide APIs for IP geolocation, for example IPinfo
https://ipinfo.io

6/ How? Well basically these companies have big databases mapping IPs to locations. IP addresses are owned by ISPs and typically assigned to computers in a certain part of their network (a city or region).

7/ Usually IP geolocation is not highly accurate. Often it is only to the country, province, or city level.

But for many use cases good enough is ... good enough, for example defaulting to the correct currency on a pricing page.

8/ There are many players in the IP-to-location market, some more affordable, others claiming their data is more accurate (and thus more expensive ).

Some services also provide all sorts of other network data. Which one to work with will depend on your use case and budget.

9/ IP geolocation isn't perfect. You can use a VPN to route via another IP so that it looks like your request is coming from somewhere else.

For example if content you want to access is restricted to a certain country - speaking purely theoretically, of course

10/ Hopefully that clears up the difference between geocoding and IP-geolocation.

Learn more in the guide on our site: https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-ip-geolocation-differs-from-geocoding

Or listen to Ben Dowling, founder of IPinfo, on Ep. 62 of the @geomob podcast. Ben chats with OpenCage co-founder @freyfogle about all the ins and outs of IP geolocation

https://thegeomob.com/podcast/episode-62

11/ Thanks for reading (and sharing).

We have more threads about the #geoweirdness of specific countries, border disputes, geocoding, etc on our blog.

Some threads are still on twitter, but week by week we are moving them to mastodon. Enjoy.

https://blog.opencagedata.com/geothreads