A site shows the wrong city for your IP? Find which layer is wrong, send provider corrections, publish a geofeed, and know which cases you can't fix.
Key Takeaways
- A "wrong location" can come from three different places: an IP geolocation database, the browser Geolocation API, or something the site stored about you earlier. Fixing the wrong one changes nothing.
- Every site uses its own database, so first find out what your IP looks like to several providers and which one the complaining site relies on.
- Ordinary users can submit a correction to each provider separately; it propagates on the provider's refresh cycle, usually weeks.
- Anyone who controls the address block can publish a geofeed (RFC 8805) and reference it from the registration record (RFC 9092). That is the only fix that pushes the truth upstream to every consumer.
- Mobile carriers, corporate and cloud egress, satellite links, and VPNs or relays are not bugs you can correct.
Step 1: Work Out Which Layer Is Wrong
People say "my IP location is wrong" about three unrelated things:
- What IP geolocation databases say about your IP. A server-side estimate that needs no permission. This is the only layer the rest of this guide can improve.
- What the browser Geolocation API says. GPS or Wi-Fi positioning, gated by a permission prompt, and usually accurate. If a map snaps to your street, this is the source, not your IP.
- What a site stored about you. An account region, a billing country, a saved delivery address, or a cookie set on an earlier visit. A site can show the old city long after your IP stopped pointing there.
If a site shows the wrong place only when you are logged in, or the wrong place survives switching networks, suspect layer 3 and change the account or profile setting. No database correction will move it. For how layer 1 produces a location (registry allocations, commercial databases, WHOIS, topology inference), see IP geolocation accuracy; this post is about the action, not the mechanism.
Step 2: Establish Ground Truth
Open the IP check and note your public IP and the country, region, and city reported for it. Then compare that against two or more independent geolocation lookups. Providers disagree with each other all the time, and a site only ever consults one of them.
What you are looking for:
- All providers agree and are right. Your IP is fine. The problem is layer 2 or 3.
- All providers agree and are wrong. Likely a registry or allocation-level issue; the geofeed route below matters most.
- Providers disagree. Only some databases are stale. You need to find out which one the complaining site uses (often visible in its privacy policy, or from its support team) before you can fix anything.
Check whether your IP changed recently as well. A new address can inherit stale data from its previous holder; see why your IP address keeps changing.
Step 3: Send a Correction to the Provider
For an ordinary user, the fix that exists is to tell the database. Most major geolocation providers run a public correction or "update my IP location" form, and a few accept corrections from the network operator directly. We won't link them here, but search for the provider's name plus "correct IP location".
What to expect:
- You must tell each provider separately. A fix at one does not reach the others.
- It takes time. Corrections ship on the provider's refresh cycle, typically days to weeks, not minutes.
- Be specific. Give the IP or prefix, the location you believe is right, and a way to verify it, such as your ISP's name and service area.
- Re-check after a few weeks with the same lookup that showed the error.
If your ISP assigned the address, ask the ISP too: they hold the registration data providers read from, and a correction from the network operator carries more weight than one from an end user.
Step 4: Publish a Geofeed (If You Control the Block)
If you run a network, a hosting service, or a business with its own address space, there is an authoritative route. A geofeed is a plain CSV file you publish yourself that maps your prefixes to locations. RFC 8805 defines the format: one line per prefix, with comment lines starting with #.
# prefix, country, region, city
192.0.2.0/24,US,US-CA,San Francisco
2001:db8::/32,DE,DE-BE,Berlin
The country is an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, the region an ISO 3166-2 code, and the city a plain name; trailing fields can be left empty when you only want country-level data. (The example prefixes are reserved documentation ranges.)
A file on its own is only a claim, so consumers need to find it and know it comes from the address holder. RFC 9092 specifies how (it has since been updated by RFC 9632, which keeps the same approach): the URL of the geofeed is attached to the address block's registration record, as a geofeed: attribute or a remarks: Geofeed line in the regional registry's whois/RPSL data. A provider that ingests geofeeds follows that reference from the registration and fetches the file. Because only the block's maintainer can edit its registration record, the pointer itself is evidence of who published the file; the RFC also defines an optional RPKI signature for operators who want the file cryptographically tied to the address holder.
Why this matters: it is the only mechanism that pushes the truth to every consumer at once instead of one correction form at a time. The honest caveats are that ingestion is up to each provider, so propagation is not instant or guaranteed, and the geofeed has to be kept current when you move or renumber a prefix. Test the file for syntax errors before referencing it.
Step 5: Cases You Cannot Fix
Some "wrong" locations are the network behaving as designed, and chasing them wastes time:
- Mobile networks and carrier-grade NAT. Your traffic exits through a regional aggregation point, which may be in another city or province.
- Corporate, university, and cloud egress. You appear at headquarters or at the data center region, not at your desk.
- Satellite links. One ground station can serve an enormous area.
- Recently reassigned ranges. Databases lag, and only the correction and geofeed routes above shorten that.
For the reasons behind each, see IP geolocation accuracy. If a mobile carrier is the cause, the practical answer is to rely on the browser's permission-based location for anything that needs your real position.
Step 6: When a VPN or Relay Is Doing Its Job
If you use a VPN, proxy, or a privacy relay such as iCloud Private Relay, a location that is not yours is the intended result; see privacy tools compared. Disconnect and re-run the IP check before filing any correction.
One more thing to know: when only your IP moves, the browser still reports your real timezone and language. A gap between those and the IP's location is a detection signal in its own right; see timezone and locale leaks and how websites detect VPNs. So the aim of a correction is an accurate location for your real connection, not a different one.
A Checklist to Run Top to Bottom
- Decide which layer is wrong: database, browser Geolocation API, or stored account data.
- If stored data, fix the account or profile setting and stop here.
- Disconnect any VPN, proxy, or relay and open the IP check to read your IP and reported location.
- Compare with two other geolocation lookups and note which ones are wrong.
- Find out which database the affected site uses.
- Submit a correction to each wrong provider, with a prefix and a verifiable location.
- If you control the block, publish an RFC 8805 geofeed and reference it from your registry record (RFC 9092 / RFC 9632).
- Rule out CGNAT, corporate or cloud egress, and satellite links; if one applies, stop correcting.
- Wait a few weeks, then re-check with the same lookups.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take for a corrected IP location to show up?
Usually days to weeks, depending on each provider's refresh cycle. Each provider must be corrected separately, so different sites may update at different times.
Why does my phone show a different city than my laptop?
Your phone may be on a mobile carrier that routes traffic through a regional gateway, while your laptop uses your home ISP. Each address is geolocated on its own, and the carrier's often points to the gateway city.
Can I change my IP location myself?
You can correct a database entry that is wrong, via provider forms or a geofeed. This guide does not cover making a site believe you are somewhere else; a VPN or relay does that openly, with the trade-offs described above.
Is the browser's location the same as my IP location?
No. The browser Geolocation API uses GPS or Wi-Fi with your permission and is usually accurate. IP location is a permission-free estimate, accurate to a city at best.
