How to locate end users using geolocation
What is geolocation and how accurate is it?
Implio’s built-in geolocation filter allows you to locate end users geographically based on the IP address of their device.
IP addresses sent through the API are automatically turned into a corresponding country, city, postal code and latitude/longitude.
Keep in mind that this information is an estimate of the device's location -- usually several kilometers away from the user's actual location.
Note also that some IP addresses cannot be turned into a corresponding geolocation, or that their geolocation may only contain partial information (e.g. just a country but no city or postal code).
While nowhere near as precise as a GPS positioning for instance, it is still useful to estimate where in the world your users are located, and spot abnormal patterns or discrepancies in their location.
You can use geolocation when reviewing content manually, or when creating automation rules.
How to make use of geolocation?
Before you start
Implio will automatically attempt to resolve a geolocation for any IP address that you send through the API.
All you need to do is to ensure that the location.ipAddress field is populated with your users' IP addresses when submitting their contents for moderation. See API documentation for more information.
In manual moderation
Geolocation information is included in the Location details section of the manual moderation interface and is displayed in the following way:
Paris, 75001, FR
where:
-
Parisis the city -
75001is the postal code -
FRis the country code (for France in this case)
Geolocation properties that couldn't be resolved aren't indicated.
When there is no geolocation associated with the IP address, the geolocation information reads N/A
When no IP address is provided, the geolocation line is removed altogether.
You can easily locate the end user on a map using the provided link to Google Maps (note: only available when there is a latitude/longitude associated with the geolocation).
The geolocation is displayed next to the user-defined location. The user-defined location represents the location that was declared by the end user when posting his content.
As they are placed next to each other, you can quickly compare their value and notice any discrepancy.
In automation rules
Automation rules can access the geolocation using the following variables. These variables contain the empty string "" when the associated value is not available (no IP address was specified) or could not be determined:
| Variable name (Simple mode) |
Variable name (Advanced mode) |
Description |
|---|---|---|
| Geolocation city |
$geoCity |
Contains the name of the city (in English) associated with the user's geolocation at the time of posting |
| Geolocation continent |
$geoContinent |
Contains the name of the continent (in English) associated with the user's geolocation at the time of posting |
| Geolocation country |
$geoCountry |
Contains the name of the country (in English) associated with the user's geolocation at the time of posting |
| Geolocation country code |
$geoCountryCode |
Contains the two-letter country code (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2) associated with the user's geolocation at the time of posting |
| Geolocation postal code |
$geoPostalCode |
Contains the postal code associated with the user's geolocation at the time of posting |
You could for instance create a $geoCountry NOT EQUALS "Sweden" condition that sends all contents posted by users located outside of Sweden to manual review.
In custom machine learning
For clients using our custom machine learning, geolocation will automatically be used when predicting whether an item should be accepted, refused or manually reviewed. This happens automatically, you don't need to enable anything.