Troubleshooting – The Geolocation Condition

If you set up a geolocation trigger and it seems like it isn’t working, there are a few common points to consider.

1. Are you testing If-So on a local server or an internal environment?

Since the Geolocation condition relies on an external API to compare the user’s IP and location, the geolocation condition will only work in a live environment.

2. Is there a communication failure between your server and ours?

No worries, it’s not complicated to check it. On your WordPress dashboard, go to If-So > Geolocation. If the value of the “Sessions used this month” is 0/0 then it’s probably a communication failure. Please contact our support and let us know the domain of the website you are trying to use If-So on.

3. Are you testing the site using a VPN?

If-So’s Geolocation condition will not take action while browsing the site via VPN. If you don’t see the geo-targeted version, it doesn’t mean If-So is not functioning properly. Try testing the page using an online proxy server or target your own country and see if you get the correct result.

If the reason you are using a VPN is only to see how the content looks on your site, it is much easier to use the built-in testing mode option. This option allows you to preview a specific dynamic content version of your site.

4. Are you using a caching plugin?

Caching, in simple words, means you present your website visitors with a “snapshot” of your rendered page instead of rendering it from scratch each time a visitor enters the site.

If you’re using any kind of cache on your site (using a caching plugin, CDN, server cache, or any other), go to If-So > Settings on your WordPress dashboard and enable the Page Caching Compatibility option. Learn more about If-So’s compatibility with caching.

5. Is it a detection accuracy issue?

No IP-to-location service is 100%. The accuracy of a location depends on many factors, the most important being the ISP of the address. The accuracy is generally higher for fixed lines than it is for cellular networks.

The list below shows how If-So recognizes your location. Naturally, if you have set up a trigger and targeted your actual location while the value detected by our system is wrong, the dynamic version will not be displayed as excepted.

The good news: Accuracy issues are something we can fix. You simply need to send us your IP and your actual location and we’ll make sure the IP-to-location database we are using will be updated.

Learn more here about geolocation accuracy.

Here is what your current location appears as:

Continent:

Country:

State:

City:

Timezone:

Report a mistake

6. Do you have enough Geolocation session credits on your account?

Unlike other If-So conditions, geolocation usage is limited by monthly sessions. To see your monthly session usage, go to If-So > Geolocation on your WordPress admin. A session begins when a visitor first visits a page with a geolocation trigger and ends when the visitor closes the browser or after 25 minutes elapse.

7. Are you using Cloudflare?

From time to time we encounter conflicts between our geolocation service and Cloudflare. We can solve them! Paste the following code at the end of your functions.php file and try again. If it doesn’t solve the problem, please contact our support.

add_filter('ifso_user_ip',function(){
$ip = null;
if (!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP']))      //Cloudflare
$ip = $_SERVER['HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP'];
elseif (!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP']))
$ip = $_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'];
elseif (!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']))
$ip = explode(',',$_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'])[0];
else
$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

if(!empty($ip)){
$ip = explode(':',$ip)[0];
}

return $ip;
});

Still have a question? Feel free to contact our support team, we will be happy to help!

Related FAQs

• The geolocation session count doesn't seem accurate
  The geolocation service is powered by an IP-to-location API. When a user visits a page with a geolocation condition or DKI shortcode for the first time during their session, a request is sent to the geolocation database to compare the user’s IP with the location information stored in the database.

  What is a geolocation session?

  A geolocation session starts when a visitor first accesses a page with a geolocation trigger or a Geolocation DKI shortcode and lasts until the visitor closes their browser or has been inactive for 25 minutes (note that this time frame may vary slightly depending on the browser and server hosting the website).

  Not every page view should count as a session!

  1. The geolocation session is initiated only when a visitor accesses a page with a geolocation trigger or a geolocation DKI shortcode, and a request to the IP-to-location API is made to compare the visitor’s IP with the location in the database.
  2. If the user browses several pages within the same visit, it will still be considered a single session. The session will end when the visitor closes the browser or after 25 minutes of inactivity, though this duration may vary slightly depending on the browser and server.

  Troubleshooting inaccurate session counts

  If you are experiencing issues with your session count, it is most likely due to bots visiting your site and consuming your session quota.

  To identify and block bots, If-So offers two options:

  1. “Block Bots” mode – automatically blocks search engines and bots that declare themselves as bots.
  2. Manual blocking – logs all geolocation requests, provides a list of IPs that extensively trigger sessions, and allows you to block them at your discretion.

  Block Bots mode

  The “Block Bots” mode allows you to automatically prevent Search Engine Crawlers, CURL Requests, and other bots from accessing the geolocation service.

  When the “Block Bots” mode is enabled, bots will be able to access your site as usual, but they will be blocked from accessing the geolocation service. Instead, they will be served with the default content version (or “fallback” in case you are using the Geolocation DKI shortcodes)

  
  

  To enable the “Block Bots” mode, follow these steps:

  1. Ensure that you have both the If-So plugin and the If-So Geolocation extension installed on your WordPress site.
  2. Access your WordPress dashboard and navigate to If-So > Settings.
  3. Under the Geolocation section, select the “Block Bots” option.

  The “Bot Blocking” mode enables you to automatically prevent Search Engine Crawlers, CURL Requests, and other bots from accessing the geolocation service.

  Which bots will be blocked?

  The “Bots Block” mode identifies bots by searching for commonly used terms in the User-Agent header. The following terms, if present in the User-Agent, will trigger a block:

  • bot
  • crawl
  • slurp
  • spider
  • mediapartners
  • curl
  • wget

  Please note that while the “Bot Blocking” mode is designed to capture the majority of bot traffic, it may not completely block all bots. Keep in mind that the User-Agent can be easily manipulated, which can potentially bypass the block.

  If necessary, you can utilize the “Log geolocation requests” option to manually identify IP addresses that consume your session quota excessively. By logging these requests, you can keep track of suspicious activity and take measures to manually block those IPs as needed.

  

  Whitelisting IPs

  To exclude a specific IP from being blocked by the “Bots Block” mode, you can whitelist the IP address by adding the following shortcode at the end of your functions.php file:

  add_filter('ifso_geo_whitelist',function($allow){
      $allow['ip'] = ['X.XX.XX.XXX','Y.YY.YY.YYY'];
      return $allow;
  });
  

  Please ensure to replace ‘X.X.X.X‘ and ‘Y.Y.Y.Y‘ with the respective IP addresses you wish to whitelist.

  Manual blocking

  If you have enabled the log file and are consistently discovering new IPs that exhaust your sessions quota by generating numerous bot sessions, please ensure that you load dynamic content using Ajax. Based on our experience, loading content with Ajax helps prevent many bots from utilizing the geo sessions.

  If you don’t want to automatically block search engines and other bots, If-So offers a log feature that records each geolocation request, including the IP and date and time of the request.

  By analyzing this log, you can pinpoint the IPs of bots that are causing the issue and block them from the geolocation service (They will still be able to visit the site, but the geolocation service will not be available for them).

  Step-by-step: Blocking bots from the geolocation service

  1. Download and install our If-So Geolocation Extension.
  2. Go to If-So > Settings and check the “Log geolocation requests” checkbox. Checking the option will create a log file that includes the IP and the exact time of each geolocation request.

  

  3. Allow some time for the log file to collect data. After sufficient time has passed (depending on your website traffic), go to the If-So menu in your WordPress dashboard and click on “Analyze Geolocation Request Log”.
  4. Look for IPs with a large number of geolocation sessions. If you find such IPs, click the “More About this IP” button to gather more information about their source. If you find such IPs, click the “More About this IP” button and try to gather more information regarding their source.
     
     If the IP points to a data center (like Google, Amazon, etc.), it may indicate that it’s a bot.

  

  The example below shows an IP belongs to a data center:

  

  *Please note that enabling the geolocation log file may slow down the loading speed of pages with a geolocation condition. It is recommended to disable the log file after collecting the necessary information.

  Blocking an IP Address

  If you decide to block certain IP addresses, add the following code to your function.php file, and replace the XX.XX… and YY.YYY… placeholders with the IPs you want to block.

  • The code only blocks the IPs from the geolocation functionality, and not from accessing your website.
  • Blocked IPs will see the default content version.

  add_filter('ifso_exclude_from_geo',function($exclude){ $exclude['ip'] = ['XX.XX.XXX.XXX','YY.YYY.YYY.YYY']; return $exclude; });