Unique Visitor With Multiple Locations

[davidb98884514]

Using a visitor container, I built the following segment:

State = Florida OR State = New York

It showed visitor counts for this segment. Based on IP address, how is this possible?

Thanks in advance,

David

[AkhilSharma]

Hi David,

If we are building a rule for the location of the visitor which is identified based on the IP address.

Let me know if it helps and mark it closed if it answer your question.

Thanks and Regards

Akhil

[nick_homer · Accepted solution]

VPN could also make the difference.  I'm currently VPN'ed into San Jose, so if I were shopping on a site I'd show up from California, but if I hop off of VPN in the middle of my visit to your site, I'll now show up from Utah, but the SiteCat visitor ID cookie will remain the same.  I can tell you that this happens OFTEN for me when I'm shopping around online as I'm constantly jumping on and off of VPN.

[davidb98884514]

Hi Akhil,

Unfortunately, your response wasn't all that helpful. Can you please elaborate as to why one visitor can be from two different states?

[davidb98884514]

I apologize - I meant to say AND.

[apowersadobe]

Hi David,

I suspect the State criteria you used is for the s.state variable. Typically, it's populated on purchase confirmation for an eCommerce site, set to shipping or billing state. If so, then visitors who made multiple purchases and listed different states would meet your segment criteria.

The IP-based one is shown as GeoSegmentation Regions/States in the Reports & Analytics segment builder. Any results for that segment would represent visitors who accessed the site from IPs in each state.

Please, let us know if that hunch is correct and helps.

Andy

[davidb98884514]

I was referring to the built in geosegmentation. Thanks a lot!

[Gigazelle]

I've seen this quite commonly, especially with mobile devices or laptops. For example:

1. A user browses to your site from their laptop connected to their home network in Florida.
2. Several weeks later, they have a corporate meeting in California, and hop on a plane to travel to the meeting.
3. While in California, they browse to your site again.
4. While traveling back several days later, they have a layover in Dallas, and use the airport's wifi to visit your site.

This visitor had three different visits, all in different states. It's the same browser, same cookie, but the IP address they used to connect to the internet were all in different states, thus populating California, Florida, and Texas in your report.