Tracking the origin of visitors

[Mr Chunder]

I'd like to find out how people track the country of origin of their visitors and thus do their marketing better.

I've been using webtrends for a while only to discover that they determine the origin of a person by their TLD i.e. take their IP address, look it up and then if its .com, its US, if its .ca, its canadian etc.

This is not at all accurate since many corporations and ISPs around the world use .com addresses. That means that it shows very high figures for US based customers. Getting in contact more with my customers, it seems that they are from all over - particularly Europe and the Far East.

I've heard that ad serving companies such as DART generate origin stats but how do they do it. I've also heard that IP addresses are usually allocated on a per country basis so you could use them but international corporations probably run those out of the US.

I'm wondering if there is another protocol or method to establish geographical location ? It seems in the US, internet routers are given the name of their physical location so you can follow origins using this method.

What sort of sources do people use and is there an accurate method ?

[reverian]

Most hosting companies provide stats and logs that are available for download that will provide the information that you are needing. You will have to check with your hosting provider to see if that info is available. Our hosting service, as well as many others can provide you with reffering urls and such information that you are looking for. :)

[JTY]

It's possible to do a reverse lookup on an ip and then determine the provider. Which you can lookup on various web sites.

[Mr Chunder]

The fact that I didn't get my question answered, I supposes, answers my question. ;)

Basically, you guys are talking about tools such as webtrends used by hosting companies or just simple DNS lookups :(

None of these work since they make assumptions like all .com is US, which I know is not the case. A number of big European telecoms companies allocate their internet customers IP addresses that resolve to .com. so a DNS lookup based tool will assume that all of these European customers are in fact US. Not correct !

I'll re-phrase my question since I it may not be clear enough

DETERMINING THE TRUE COUNTRY OF ORIGIN OF A VISITOR ?

I will also ask in a different manner:

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT PERCENTAGE OF YOUR VISITORS ARE REALLY FROM EUROPE ?

I suspect that it is not possible.:confused:

Thanks people anyway.:)

[reverian]

Sorry Mr. Chunder... As far as I know.. that is impossible... but if you find a way... let me know :)