Where does analytics pull information from for general keyphrases that do not list a city? Ex: Restaurants, Playgrounds, Librarys

[seomozinator]

I have heard that when doing a general search, the search engine will pull the results based on IP address. But what if that information is not available? Where does analytics pull that keyword information if there is no location associated with the keyphrase?

[davidangotti]

While the location information has the potential to be very helpful in making business decisions, this data is far from perfect. Google still primarily accomplishes location mapping using IP addresses (specific) and ranges. If the information is not available, a location (not set) will be reported. This simply means that the information was not captured due to not having an IP address to work with. Looking at 100,000+ visits in one of my web properties over the past 30 days we are running between 3-4% location not set. In addition, there are major issues associated with accuracy for mobile devices.

Google says the following on their official page:

"For web visitors, Location is derived from mapping IP addresses to geographic locations. City location may not be accurate for visits from mobile devices.

You can read more about it here:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1144408?hl=en

Hope that helps!