Detecting Visitor Location

[Stephen Bell]

I've been looking into serving custom content for visitors based on their physical location.  For example, on our Admissions pages, I'd like to be able to load a box with links for visitors based on which state they are in (ie. "OC Alums from Alaska" box).  I like the idea of using a Google product, since we're already using a lot of their code, but I am in the market for something else if it's more useful/reliable.

The Google options are...

Built in to the Google AJAX API:

http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/documentation/#ClientLocation

If you're already using the AJAX API to "google.load" other bits of javascript, like jQuery, this functionality is already included in the files you're loading. My understanding is that this location service uses only IP address, so it's not all that accurate (though if you're only worried about state like me, it might not be a problem).  My bigger problem with this service is that it only seems to work some of the time, and I'm not sure why.

Google Gears Geolocation API:

http://code.google.com/apis/gears/api_geolocation.html

This service is far more accurate (a series of fallbacks from GPS, cell networks, IP address) , but I believe it requires your visitor to have some kind of plugin installed or client-side software, which makes it useless for everyday use on a normal website.

So...  Does anyone have experience with services like these? Any recommendations for other options or ways to make these work?  Has anyone had any luck with HTML5 Geolocation?

http://marcgrabanski.com/articles/html5-geolocation-fallback-google...

http://maxheapsize.com/static/html5geolocationdemo.html

[Jason Garber]

I was just chatting with Marc this morning, how weird is that? His solution looks great. I wonder if the HTML5 component will always trigger a prompt. Maybe not something you want.

It's been five years since I used geolocation and we just used MaxMind's free geolocation database. We ran a test against their paid databases and the free one was just as effective for detecting the country of our international customers (I was working for a private company at the time).

Using it for admissions is a great idea. You could show them their counselor based on territories, alumni in their area (your idea), student profiles from their home area, counselor travel dates to their state, etc. Very cool.

[Stephen Bell]

I think I'm going to flip Marc's solution into reverse and use the Google solution with a fallback to HTML5. That way I can avoid the prompt that you mentioned for most visitors, but hopefully catch some of the people that Google isn't catching.