Geotargetting text links

[baldidiot]

For a while now I've wanted to do a world wide casino/poker guide that would get affiliate commissions from hotel sales etc.. but a major problem is that each hotel site seems to only track to a single country (eg: uk, us). So I would either have to pick a country and sacrifice revenues from all other countries, or geotarget the links.

The way I see it there are two ways of doing this:

1. Geotarget the page to show different links. So if a user from australia goes on the site, they see a link for an australian hotel site. The benefit of this is that I could also geotarget other aspects of the page such as price/currency and so on.

2. Geotarget the link after the user clicks on it. So the link would always be: example.com/jump-to-hotel-deep-link which would then redirect according to the users location. So the australian user would get redirected to the australian hotel site, and so on.

Does anyone have any opinions as to which is a better way of doing it?

[DaveL]

I think if you can can Geotarget the page, that's your most user-friendly. It doesn't have to be the whole page, you can geo-target portions of the page using something like OpenX. I've used it in the past with great success - you can set up custom HTML in it. I've published large sections using that on old sites.

[baldidiot]

Thanks!

Would you recommend hosting openx yourself or have them host it?

[DaveL]

I used to host a few instances of it myself - the updates can be a bit torturous. I stopped using it as I choose a simpler non-rotational / non geo-targetting solution to make my life easier. OpenX is very complicated, but also very sophisticated if you're prepared to give it a lot of time. Don't know what their costs are like for them hosting it though, but it may be a much easier way of managing it provided you get the same feature-set as you would if you hosted it yourself and used the full product.

[rak]

I havent used OpenX. But I did use MaxMind open source country geo targeting database, and some code I wrote.

I didnt geo target the whole page, because it could come across as blackhat if your content changes depending on the country hitting the page. But I did geo target advertising elements of the page where text links and banners were placed.

My methodology was.

grab the users IP
Check it against the database for the country
get advertisements for that country
pass those advertisement as variable down through the page

Its really very simple.

I can show you how to do it if you want.
Also here is the maxmind database I used : http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecountry

[baldidiot]

Don't know what their costs are like for them hosting it though, but it may be a much easier way of managing it provided you get the same feature-set as you would if you hosted it yourself and used the full product.

I think it's free for less than 100 million impressions.

I havent used OpenX. But I did use MaxMind open source country geo targeting database, and some code I wrote.

I didnt geo target the whole page, because it could come across as blackhat if your content changes depending on the country hitting the page. But I did geo target advertising elements of the page where text links and banners were placed.

My methodology was.

grab the users IP
Check it against the database for the country
get advertisements for that country
pass those advertisement as variable down through the page

Its really very simple.

I can show you how to do it if you want.
Also here is the maxmind database I used : http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecountry

I've used maxmind as part of a plug in for geotargetting adverts, but never from scratch. Is it just a case of looking up the IP in the DB?

[rak]

I've used maxmind as part of a plug in for geotargetting adverts, but never from scratch. Is it just a case of looking up the IP in the DB?

Yes and no.


Heres the code to convert the IP to what maxmind needs ($pnum) which you then query the database


function VisitorIP() {
if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']))
$TheIp=$_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];
else $TheIp=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

return trim($TheIp);
}

$ipaddress = VisitorIP();
list($w, $x, $y, $z) = explode(".", $ipaddress);
$pnum = (16777216 * $w) + (65536 * $x) + (256 * $y) + $z;


//query to get the IP from the database - using pnum from above, you have to find it between a range.

SELECT isocountry
FROM geo_blocks
WHERE
$pnum >= ip_start_num
AND $pnum <= ip_end_num
LIMIT 1

[baldidiot]

Yes and no.


Heres the code to convert the IP to what maxmind needs ($pnum) which you then query the database


function VisitorIP() {
if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']))
$TheIp=$_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];
else $TheIp=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

return trim($TheIp);
}

$ipaddress = VisitorIP();
list($w, $x, $y, $z) = explode(".", $ipaddress);
$pnum = (16777216 * $w) + (65536 * $x) + (256 * $y) + $z;


//query to get the IP from the database - using pnum from above, you have to find it between a range.

SELECT isocountry
FROM geo_blocks
WHERE
$pnum >= ip_start_num
AND $pnum <= ip_end_num
LIMIT 1

You're a star, thanks mate!

[rak]

You're a star, thanks mate!

Anytime! If you get stuck with anything, lmk. I'll sort it!