Get Location Data for Your Website with Open Source API

Website ToolsCarrie Cousins • May 22, 2019 • 3 minutes READ

Do you ever wish you knew more about website visitors to provide more personalized experiences?

IP Geolocation API does just that.

It’s a free an open source tool for IP to geolocation. It’s fairly easy to use and can help you make your website work better for people around the world. Here’s a look at the tool and how it works.

Why Use Geolocation Data?

Geolocation data is valuable when it comes to creating more unique and personalized website experiences. This information can “tell” your website how to display certain information such as what language users are likely to speak (so they can get the correct version of the design) or time zones that connect to interactive elements or time-sensitive notifications.

Geolocation is the identification or estimation of the real-world geographic location of an Internet-connected computer terminal or device.

Geolocation data provided by IP Geolocation API also includes phone and dialing prefixes with country codes – making click or tap to call that much easier.

IP Geolocation API is different from other tools in that it is open source and free to use and it provides fairly detailed information without detecting a user’s actual IP address (which is a privacy bonus).

What Does IP Geolocation API Do?

IP Geolocation API is a real-time IP to Geolocation JSON API with detailed country data integration.

Use it for information such as location (country and continent) with alpha and numerical codes, latitude and longitude, international prefix, location name, languages spoken, and currency code.

This tool uses country information packaged as convenient JSON objects. It includes data from ISO 3166 (countries and states/subdivisions ), ISO 4217 (currency), and E.164 (phone numbers). It is updated monthly so that you know information is up-to-date and accurate.

Then with a few lines of code, this information can power the backend of your website to provide location-specific information for users. Think of the value from visiting an online shop that’s not in your location and the currency is auto-detected and appears in the correct format. Imagine visiting a site from another country and having the language shift to what you speak without having to do anything.

These are the kinds of things a tool like IP Geolocation API can help with. It creates solutions on the back end of your website so that users get a better experience from start to finish. (And they won’t have to do anything to make it happen.)

The tool is from the team at apilayer, which makes all kinds of innovative apps for website owners and users. Their tools include currencylayer, screenshotlayer, numverify, pdflayer and more.

From the company: “Our goal is to offer quick and simple access to our software with the objective of speeding up development of your applications and easing the burden on your back-end.

“Our team has the opportunity to rethink how key processes work and how they can be improved, and we are thrilled to be building an entire platform dedicated to allowing companies to focus on what really matters.” apilayer.

How Do You Get It?

IP Geolocation API is a free, open-source tool. All you have to do is go grab it here.

There’s also a self-hosting option available. (Just look for the “Deploy to Heroku” button.

The developers do ask that you cache the results when possible to keep the service functioning as smoothly as possible and maintain the ability to offer it free. There’s no warranty with this free tool, but the team behind it has a good track record of keeping things running smoothly.

Conclusion

The great thing about IP Geolocation API is that it provides valuable website data that you can use to make adjustments to your current website or a new build. It’s user-friendly and works without using an actual IP address, so there are no privacy concerns.

And the best part is that this is an open source tool. If you have a website that relies on any location information, it can be a great asset. Try it out and see for yourself.