Why is my IP location wrong?

There is no registry that records where each IP address lives. What exists is a handful of commercial databases (MaxMind, IPinfo, DB-IP, IP2Location and a few others) plus the in-house data of large networks such as Google and Cloudflare. Each one assigns a location to a block of addresses, typically 256 or more at a time, and every website that asks about your address gets that block-level answer.

The guess is built from three kinds of evidence:

• Registry records. When a regional registry (ARIN, RIPE NCC, APNIC, LACNIC, AFRINIC) allocates a block to a provider, the record names the organization and a country. That is often the only hard fact a database has, and it describes the company, not its customers.
• Geofeeds. Some operators publish a CSV file in the RFC 8805 format that says, per prefix, which country, region and city the addresses are used in. Databases import these daily. Most residential ISPs still do not publish one.
• Measurements and usage patterns. Latency from probes in known cities, the places where users of a block sign in to services with their real location, and Wi-Fi positioning data collected by apps all nudge the guess toward the city where the block is actually used.

Databases are rebuilt weekly or monthly. In between, blocks are sold, re-routed and re-purposed, so the answer you see today may describe who used your address last year.

Accuracy drops quickly as you zoom in. These are the figures MaxMind publishes for its own GeoIP databases, which are among the most widely used on the web:

Every serious database also ships an accuracy radius with each answer, commonly 20 to 200 km. The pin a website drops on a map is the center of that circle, which is why it so often lands on a highway interchange or a field outside town.

Run the my location check. It shows the city, region and coordinates several databases assign to your address and how far apart they are, and, if you allow it, your device's real GPS position next to them for comparison. Large gaps between the databases point to a stale or disputed block; a large gap between all of them and your GPS position points to one of the causes below. The IP location finder does the same for any address you type in.

Mobile carriers and carrier-grade NAT

Phone networks concentrate traffic at a small number of gateways per country and share each public address among thousands of subscribers behind carrier-grade NAT. The database can only locate the gateway, so a phone in a small town shows up in the capital or in the carrier's data-center city hundreds of miles away. This is by design and cannot be corrected per customer.

Your ISP routes you through a regional hub

Cable, fiber and DSL providers often assign addresses from pools that span several cities or states and hand traffic to the internet at a regional exchange point. Databases record the place where the pool mostly appears. If your provider's hub is one state over, so are you, as far as websites can tell.

VPN, proxy, Tor or Private Relay

With a VPN or proxy active, websites see the server's address, so they place you at the server. Apple's iCloud Private Relay deliberately hands out an address that matches only your general region, or just your country and time zone if you choose that option. Check with the proxy and VPN checker if you are not sure whether something is in the path.

Recently reassigned or new address blocks

Address blocks are leased, sold and moved between countries all the time. A block that belonged to a hosting company in Frankfurt last year may now serve homes in Ohio, and a database that has not caught up still says Frankfurt. New allocations have no usage history at all, so the first guess is often the registry's country and the organization's head office.

Corporate and school networks

Many organizations send every office's traffic out through a head-office firewall or a cloud security gateway. An employee in Denver appears in New Jersey because that is where the company's internet connection is.

IPv6 and anycast quirks

If your connection uses IPv6, a site may be locating your IPv6 prefix, which some databases know far less about than the IPv4 side. Anycast addresses (announced from many places at once) confuse latency-based estimates. The IPv6 test shows which protocol your browser prefers.

A different site uses a different database

Google, Netflix, your bank and a weather site rarely use the same source. One may have updated your block last week and another last year, so you can be in the right city on one site and the wrong one on another at the same moment.

Only the database owners can change their data, and each one maintains it separately. The realistic options, in order of effort:

1. Confirm the address and block. Note your public address from the homepage and the provider shown by what is my ISP. Corrections are filed per block, and a database may refuse a correction for a block that genuinely serves a wide area.
2. File a correction with MaxMind. MaxMind accepts one-off corrections from individuals for their home address through the correction form on its website; a free account skips the email verification step. Submissions are reviewed in one to two business days and appear in the next database release.
3. File with IPinfo and DB-IP. Both accept individual corrections through forms on their websites. IPinfo's data also feeds Cloudflare's geolocation, so a fix there reaches a large share of the web.
4. Ask your ISP to publish a geofeed. This is the durable fix. A provider that publishes an RFC 8805 geofeed and references it in its registry record gets all major databases updated automatically within days, and Google accepts geofeeds from network operators through its ISP portal. Point your provider's support or network team to RFC 8805 and RFC 9632; many have simply never been asked.
5. Give it time, then re-check. Expect one to four weeks for a correction to spread across sites. Google products can take longer because they use their own data.

If the cause is a VPN, a mobile gateway or your employer's network, no correction form will help; the database is describing the network accurately. Changing the network you are on (Wi-Fi instead of cellular, VPN off, a different server) changes the answer immediately.

A wrong city is harmless for most browsing, but a few services act on it:

• Streaming and sports rights. Catalogs and blackouts are enforced by country and sometimes by region. A block that a database places across a border locks you out of your own country's catalog. Netflix, YouTube TV and the leagues rely mostly on their own or licensed databases, so the fix is a correction at the database plus patience, or a different connection.
• Banks and card issuers. Fraud systems compare the login location with your usual pattern. A sudden jump from Ohio to Frankfurt (because your provider moved you to a reassigned block) can trigger extra verification or a temporary lock. Telling the bank the new address is yours usually clears it; a fraud score check shows what else about the address might look suspicious.
• Shopping and pricing. Stores pick currency, tax and shipping country from the IP, then let you override it. If the override keeps resetting, clear cookies and set the country manually again.
• Search results and ads. Google weights its own location signals (account history, device location permission) above the IP; a wrong IP city mostly shows up as odd local ads.

None of these services can see your real address through the IP. If one needs your real location, the correct mechanism is a device location prompt, which is yours to accept or decline.