Getting accurate Geo Location traffic stats in Google Analytics - HELP

[Wagada]

One of our clients services the US and the UK, but having looked at the report over an extended period of time we can still see that the vast majority of traffic is coming from the US. I.e. our last report for March indicated that there were over 3,000 users in the US but only 6 in the UK.

We know that Google Analytics works out a user’s location based on where their IP is located and not their physical location, and that this means that the data needs to be taken with a pinch of salt as it won’t always represent what you expect.

That being said, we know that the traffic figures for Europe are largely inaccurate and would like to get some more accurate stats to report on. Is there a way to do so at all within Google Analytics?

[R0bin_L0rd]

Hi there! Probably not the answer you were hoping for but, on the country level, I'd say GA's reported location is about as accurate as you'll get without asking users for their location (either automatically shared or self-reported). I don't think you'd want to be asking every user to share their location - it would probably demolish your conversion rate - so I don't think there's masses you can do there.

That said, how do you know the traffic figures for Europe are inaccurate? I don't think it's beyond the realms of possibility for a perfectly functional site to have 3K US visitors and 6 UK visitors even if both countries are being targeted. Do you know the figures are off because you are explicitly targeting ads at UK visitors and you can see the clicks but they get registered as US visitors in GA? As you specify that you think Europe in particular is inaccurate - is that because you are opting European visitors out of your site tracking?

[effectdigital]

I agree with Robin, I don't think there's a solid way to do what you want - or one that is infinitely superior to GA (which also doesn't damage conversion rates). IP addresses by and large, are sometimes inaccurate at the city / town level but they are 'usually' accurate at the national level. The only other option you have in GA is looking at browser language settings and that's incredibly misleading due to most PCs being shipped on US English by default