How does automatic geolocation work?

One of our most popular features is automatic geolocation, which determines the location of your visitors as soon as they load your store locator page. This allows us to instantly show nearby stores without the need to type in a search.

Here's how this works:

On desktop browsers

When a visitor views your store locator in a desktop browser, we use a technology called IP geolocation to automatically estimate the visitor's location based on their computer's IP address. This is done in the background without any prompts or notices, and the result is that your locator magically displays relevant results without the user clicking or typing anything.

The tradeoff is that IP geolocation is very approximate — it usually estimates the correct region, but generally isn't accurate to a specific street or block. Additionally, in some cases the estimate may be further off. IP addresses aren't inherently based on physical geography and can be reassigned frequently, so the databases used by our providers can take some time to update. Technologies like VPNs (which tunnel your internet connection through another location) can also cause an unexpected estimate.

The good news is that incorrect results are rare and are usually limited to a small number of visitors, and visitors can always type in their correct location to find results. Also, our providers are constantly updating their databases with new information, so issues often resolve themselves shortly.

On mobile phones

While IP geolocation can work great for desktops, we've found that it often gives poor results for mobile phones. Mobile phone IP addresses are often assigned randomly by your carrier, which makes linking them to a geographical location more problematic.

Fortunately, most phones today allow websites to ask the browser for information about the user's location. This provides very accurate results, usually based on a combination of the phone's GPS system and other location technologies (like nearby WiFi networks). When we detect a visitor using a phone, we'll ask the browser for a location to ensure your store locator shows accurate results.

The tradeoff here is that browsers will prompt the user for permission before granting access to the locator. This is usually a single tap away, so we feel it's still a better option than trying to type in a city or address on a phone keyboard. Additionally, if a visitor just tapped on a link to a store locator, they'll likely understand the reason for the request and be open to accepting it.

Additionally, these factors can impact the process:

• Browsers only permit location access on secure (https) sites, so your site's platform will need to support a secure connection for this feature to work.
• The customer's device and browser will need to have Location Services permissions in the phone's settings in order to access a location. If the browser doesn't have permission to access a location itself, it won't be able to provide and estimate and won't show the permissions prompt.

Adjustments

If you'd prefer for your map to request a the browser location on desktop devices as well, please reach out to our support team and we can help configure this on your map. This will provide a more accurate estimate, but will display the permissions prompt on desktop as well.