Use the GeoIP database to extract location information from IP addresses. This can include country, region, city, asn number, and ISP organization. This plugin uses Maxmind GeoIP databases for this purpose. These databases can be downloaded from the Maxmind website and stored locally on your ICP. This allows you to avoid network latency and per query charges when processing data. The plugin is bundled with the free GeoLite2 City and Country databases out of the box, but commercial Maxmind databases are also supported.
GeoIP tracking applications are widely used to personalize web content, optimize website performance, enhance security and fraud prevention, increase SEO and local search results, and provide better customer experiences. However, these applications are limited in their accuracy and can only provide the approximate geographical location of a user.
GeoIP Database: What It Is and How to Use It
In order to improve accuracy and reduce cost, businesses should consider purchasing a self-hosted Maxmind IP databases license. This allows you to store and host the database on your own servers, eliminating network latency and per-query charges while still providing accurate location information.
The geoip filter adds the following fields to records based on their geographical information: ip_country, ip_region, ip_city, country_iso_code, continent_name, ip_region_name, timezone, asn_number, and isp_organization_name. In addition, the ip_city_name field can be further sorted based on the ip_region name and ip_country code. This sorting functionality is only available if the target_field is configured to be a full JSON object (which is the default). The filter also supports using a downstream processor that can parse this JSON object to extract additional information.
