My actual geolocation is wrong by 100 miles!
Hatterasman1
Newbie

I am a Verizon DSL customer in Seaford, Delaware. I wanted Fios, but it is not available here and I have been told that it never will be. The problem that I am having is that whenever I do a Google search for a local business or service, the results that come up are always in Philadelphia, PA, 100 miles to the north. I do not want results that assume that I live in Philadelphia, PA. I want LOCAL results. I could care less about pizza delivery businesses that are 100 miles away. I never had this problem when I was a Comcast Internet customer. For some reason, Verizon DSL has changed my actual location to Philadelphia, PA. Is there any way to fix this? I use a Windows 10 laptop in my home. If I take my laptop to my sister's house (also in Seaford, Delaware), Google knows exactly where I am and gives appropriate results. (She uses Comcast Internet). Why can't Verizon DSL get it right?

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Re: My actual geolocation is wrong by 100 miles!
smith6612
Community Leader
Community Leader

This may be because of where Verizon terminates your Internet traffic. Cable companies tend to have a more "town by town" design where a smaller pool of IP addresses is distributed across the customers for that town, and a router is in each town. Verizon's network is typically designed to service IP addresses across a wider area, with important routing equipment more Central to key backbone links, and you'll find that the IPs will report as if they're in the nearest major city instead of your home town. Verizon may have also redistributed IP addresses from Philadelphia to the regional hub servicing your DSL connect termination point.

Since GeoIP is effectively an educated guess, you'll find that over time as you hold your IP address (they rarely change on FiOS, changes often if your DSL is unstable), services which use GeoIP will start to figure out where you are and self correct.

I see the same behavior. With Spectrum (my current ISP) I show up in North Tonawanda. With Verizon DSL, I would show up in Buffalo, and it would eventually self correct to North Tonawanda.