WP Engine GeoIP allows WordPress site owners to serve different web content to different users depending on their location. You can immediately redirect visitors to content in their language or currency, display geographically-specific content, or hide irrelevant content. GeoIP empowers you to create more relevant, targeted, personalized user experiences.
WP Engine Labs late last year announced the Alpha of GeoIP as one of our first projects. After successful early stage trials, WP Engine GeoIP is entering general availability today.
What’s unique about WP Engine GeoIP is that it integrates with the EverCache system for scale. This allows you to do a lot of really great things, such as:
- Create a personal user experience by showing content especially useful to visitors in a certain location
- Maintain website speed and performance by eliminating both the need for third-party plugins and the need to exempt pages from caching if using GeoIP
- Comply with regional legal regulations by having an experience just for that geography. For example, you could show the required cookies notice in the UK but not have that degraded experience shown in the U.S.
Additionally, the GeoIP look-up actually happens on WP Engine’s servers so there is no need to connect with an external service to provide the data, which can be expensive and result in slow load times. This makes it faster than any third party service and appropriate for many exciting business applications.
Check out what a couple of our customers have said about this awesome feature:
With GeoIP, server-side IP-based geographic look-up has never been simpler. Just install the plugin and get immediate access to country, region and city for any visitor on any page of your site. You no longer have to worry about page caches, client-side implementations or third-party web services. —Matthew Hogg, Blue Ant Media
It was great to receive early access to the GeoIP functionality from WP Engine. It enabled us to show country specific content without losing the benefits of caching that WP Engine offers. The team at WP Engine was extremely helpful in setting up everything for us. Congratulations to the WP Engine team for creating something so useful yet so simple to use! —Shiraz Ahmed, Sohodox
GeoIP is a free addition for any customers with a Business Plan or above! So if you qualify and want to try GeoIP out, submit a support ticket today and we will get you started.
For more information on WP Engine GeoIP, download our ebook.
GeoIP FAQ
Does WP Engine help me configure GeoIP?
While we set up the GeoIP feature and make sure it is returning results, you must implement the code for the API call or invoke our GeoIP variables yourself.
If I am on a Personal or Professional Plan, can I add GeoIP for an additional cost?
No, GeoIP is only available on Business Plans and higher, and is available at no additional cost to those plans.
Does it work in staging?
Yes, but remember that the staging environment is never cached. Staging is strictly to test code.
Does GeoIP translate content?
Any content the you want to display must already exist. GeoIP does not translate or create new content. It only displays content based on geolocation.
Does it work with SSL?
Yes, SSL certs are domain specific. As long as the domain remains constant or you’re using a Multisite with the proper SSL certs installed, everything will work just fine.
Does it work with CDN?
We have not seen any conflicts with CDN usage.
Is use of the GeoIP plugin required?
No. Customers will still be able to present geographically-specific content without using our plugin.
Does the GeoIP plugin conflict with other plugins?
We have currently not identified any conflicts with other plugins or WordPress themes.
Will we keep the plugin updated?
Yes. If you find bugs, conflicts, or other unexpected behavior, please let us know. We are happy to update the plugin as necessary.
How accurate is it on mobile?
Mobile devices connecting to the internet via cell (E, 3G, 4G, or LTE) will not work as well with GeoIP. Because a mobile device could hit any random cell tower, thus possibly returning a false location for the user, geolocation is less accurate. Mobile devices on a Wi-Fi network will not encounter this problem.
Tomas Puig is the head of Labs for WP Engine. His career started at NASA Ames Research Center where he worked on computer security and web development. Tomas then worked in the digital ad agency industry with firms LEVEL, COG1, Rosetta, and Propane—notable clients included Facebook, New Relic, Kaiser, Cisco, and Google. Projects under his direction have won 4 Gold National ADDYs and several Cannes CLIOs. Tomas loves video games, Legos, and playing with his dog Éowyn.
Where can I find the API document, or download link, thanks.
I just saw I need to submit ticket to get start, never mind, thanks 🙂
Could you explain the decision not to offer this to those of us on the Professional Plan? In particular, the new EU VAT laws now apply to a lot of smaller eshops.
To make sure that all sites that utilize GeoIP would receive a consistent and highly performant solution, we had to limit it to Business Plans and higher at this time. We will continue to investigate whether other tiers will get access to GeoIP in the future.
Hi Stephen,
I would be very interested in Geo IP for use in a Professional Plan (even consider an additional cost). I appreciate that WPEngine want a consistent and high performing solution, but after a couple of years of active use surely the bugs have been ironed out?
Can you access the ZIP code of the IP address as well to personalize content?
Yes, the postal code, along with country code, latitude, longitude, city, and region are all available to an extent. It depends on whether or not the level of detail you are wanting is available. Sometimes we have that level of detail on geographic location, but sometimes all we know is state/provence or even country.
I’m not a WP Engine customer, but I’m interested to know how the geo data could be accessed/used in WordPress. Could you provide a brief code sample, that would for example print a different greeting depending on the country? Thanks.
Our Support Garage article, http://wpengine.com/support/geoip-personalizing-content-based-geography/, provides more information, as well as a link to a sample plugin which pulls all of the GeoIP information into WordPress making it available wherever you need.
howdy Tomas Puig
I will continue to investigate whether other tiers will get access to GeoIP in the future!
thanks for sharing!
Who is your geolocation provider?
The process of displaying content based on location happens on our platform; there isn’t any communication with 3rd party servers. The database of global IP addresses that we use is from MaxMind.
Will the zone specific content be served from the nearest server? I.e. if I create a specific start page banner for Australia, will that banner be loaded from a server close to Australia or will it be loaded from our main server located in the U.S.?
It is a shame that it is not offered to professional plan. The money you charge for professional plan, one get dedicated server from a reputed host.