I wrote a host of short blog posts for State of Search over the past few weeks to cover for the site’s owner Bas van den Beld while he was on vacation.
The most substantial of these blog posts is a case study on why geotargeting users based on IP address is a silly affair, especially when trying to determine what region of a country a user is from. In the UK especially, IP targeting is utterly broken.
State of Search: Geotargeting Based on IP Address is Broken
It’s when you get to regional IP targeting that all semblance of accuracy goes straight out the window, and it becomes nothing less than a total crapshoot. In fact, firing buckshot at a big national map will probably yield more accurate results than the geographical data you’ll get from any web analytics package.
Some other blog posts I wrote for State of Search recently are primarily news stories about new developments in search and web:
- The Explosive Growth of Google+
- Google simplifies Adwords for small businesses with AW Express
- Branded AdWords advertising boosts total site traffic
- Growing pressure on Microsoft over Bing
- Adobe Edge: SEO-friendly web animations?
- Universal Search: how often are they shown on Google’s SERPs?
By Bas van den Beld on
Thank you for doing it for me Barry, that is really appreciated, for the first time in years I really had a proper holiday :)
By Barry Adams on
@Bas, you’re very welcome, I was honoured to be able to help keep the blog running. And judging by the amount of stuff you forwarded on to us for the blog, I’m sure you didn’t relax as much as you could have. ;)
By Lauren Fisher on
Interesting, do you think Facebook’s new targeting options by zip code/postcode will help here?
By Barry Adams on
@Lauren, not if they keep relying on IP targeting instead of the location info submitted by their users on their profiles.