Geolocation
How far have I run? Will I need sunglasses today? Is my pizza nearly here? As consumers, we experience the joys of geolocation in our daily lives. As businesses, there are still countless new opportunities waiting to be explored. (You just need to know where to find them.)
Try it for freeWhy use geolocation?
OK, hands up if you've ever:
- Scrolled through so many country flags your thumb started to cramp
- Received online promotions that couldn't be less relevant to where you live
- Waited all evening for a (cold) pizza because your delivery address had a typo
Thanks, you can put your hand down now. For today's digital businesses, these examples are just the tip of the iceberg in a sea of missed opportunities. Every day, slow, inefficient, generic experiences are frustrating your users and costing you customers.
But that could all change from today. With real-time location data, you can start interacting with people in ways that are more relevant, more engaging, and more rewarding for everyone.
The basic free properties within our Geolocation service are powered by the Nominatim API and OpenStreetMap data. The premium location properties within our Geolocation service (offered by OpenStreetMap) go one step further to provide precise data such as building name.
If you want to see our Geolocation in action, web veterans Bruce Lawson and Stuart Langridge integrated geolocation into Which Three Birdies.
What is geolocation?
Geolocation is a technology that pinpoints the geographic location (longitude and latitude) of an Internet-connected device. On their own, these coordinates are about as useful as a chocolate teapot. The magic really happens when this information is translated into meaningful real-world data – like a postal address.
Websites and apps enhanced with geolocation can interact differently (in real time) with people based on where they are in the world. This allows you to engage your audience in a pretty unique way.
For example, tapping the screen once to autofill the address of a user's precise location saves them time and gives you an accurate postal address. Everyone's a winner.
Before geolocation
Directionless digital experiences that don't stand out from the crowd.
After geolocation
Rooted digital experiences that feel smooth, slick, safe, and special.
How does geolocation work?
Want to give your website real-time geolocation superpowers? It just takes a clever piece of API code. Here's how it works.
1
Request
Your website or app gets the user's permission to access location data.
2
Detect
The API matches the device's longitude/latitude (via GPS) to a geolocation database.
There you are!
3
Respond
Your website receives the address information, generating or adapting content in real time.
Get started with geolocation
With more than half the world's Internet traffic now coming from mobile devices, it's no surprise that digital businesses are taking advantage of what we have to offer.
It's easy to integrate our Geolocation technology. Read our guide to creating your own reverse geocoding lookup to get started.
Find out how we’ve helped digital businesses like yours with our success stories.
- Reliable accuracy. While IP address location has its place, we use GPS coordinates and databases for postal address accuracy you can count on.
- Integrated microservices. Combine geolocation with device detection to adapt website content based on GPS availability.
- Automatic updates. We keep the database bang up to date, so you can enjoy all the benefits with none of the stress.
Get more with Pipeline API
We could just give you the world's best geolocation intelligence and leave it there. But it gets better.
- Multiple real-time data sources in one speedy request
- Supports most popular web frameworks and programming languages
- Seamless switching between cloud and on-premise services
- And much more