How to Track the IP Address of Website Visitors With IP Address API

In today's web applications, application owners and businesses monitor the IP addresses of their visitors for many reasons. Businesses often do this for security, visitor experience, and metrics. Recently, there have been technological developments that allow them to do this easily. Businesses can now obtain the IP addresses of visitors with an IP address API.

An IP address API is a very easy-to-use and useful web service. Just send an HTTP request to use it and obtain the IP address information. Generally, IP address APIs that offer this service do not need an extra parameter. Therefore, the use of these APIs has increased considerably recently. In this article, we will talk about the advantages of tracking IP addresses. Then, we will introduce today's most popular IP address API and develop an application with it.

What are the Advantages of Tracking the IP Addresses for Businesses?

For businesses, tracking the IP addresses of their visitors can provide them with several advantages. In this section, we will discuss some of these advantages.

Explore the 10 best IP geolocation APIs!

Geolocation

IP addresses can be used to determine the geographic location of visitors. An IP geocoding API can provide businesses with unique information about the country, city, or region they are in by analyzing the IP addresses of their visitors. This information can be used to improve businesses' marketing strategies, localize content, or deliver geolocation-based offers.

Providing Hints

IP addresses can provide some clues about the online behavior of visitors. For example, an IP address API can provide information about the internet provider or network service provider the visitor is using. This information gives businesses a better understanding of visitors' demographics and online behavior.

Security Check

IP address tracking can be used to detect potential malicious visitors. An IP address API can determine if there is a security risk by comparing the visitor's IP address with known malicious IP address databases. This can help businesses take action against malicious activity.

IP Address Validation

An IP address API can check if visitors have valid or invalid addresses. This can help businesses detect fake or erroneous IP addresses and obtain accurate statistical data.

Address Standardization

IP address APIs can help businesses standardize customer addresses. For example, using an address verification API, a commercial address can be checked for accuracy, addresses can be aligned to national postal service standards, or addresses can be verified with Google's Address Validation API.

Address Autocomplete

IP address APIs can enable visitors to autocomplete their addresses. This can help users enter addresses quickly and accurately, and can also improve the accuracy of address data.

International Addresses

IP address APIs can be used to validate or standardize international addresses. It makes it easier for businesses to serve international customers by addressing the differences between different countries' address formats and standards.

Address Correction

IP address APIs can offer address correction to improve the accuracy of client addresses. For example, it can be used to correct a misspelled zip code or a misspelled street name.

Official Address Database

IP address APIs can access and verify addresses from official address databases. This helps businesses have access to accurate and up-to-date address data.

Learn how to choose the right IP geolocation API.

The ipstack API: Best IP Address Tracker API

The ipstack API is the most comprehensive and popular IP address API today. This API offers businesses one of the best services of recent times, IP address tracking.

The ipstack API provides developers and businesses with unique geolocation-related services. The requester IP lookup service is one of them. With this service, the ipstack API allows businesses to obtain the IP addresses of their visitors with just a simple API call. The endpoint provided by the ipstack API for IP address tracking service is as follows.

    https://api.ipstack.com/check?access_key=YOUR_ACCESS_KEY
                

With this endpoint, the ipstack API does not only provide the IP address information to the user. In addition to IP address information, it also provides continent name, country code, country name, region code, and even currency information.

Moreover, this API also has an endpoint that provides location information of IP addresses, IP lookup endpoint. With this endpoint, the ipstack API provides its users with the geographical location data corresponding to the IP address in a very detailed way.

Develop IP Address Tracker Application with the ipstack API

In this section, we will create an IP address tracking application using the requester IP lookup endpoint of the ipstack API. We will develop this application with Golang, one of today's most popular programming languages. Before creating the application, let's sign up for one of the affordable plans offered by the ipstack API and get an API key.

Now, we can open a Golang file in the file path where we will develop the application. Let's name this file 'ip-address-tracker' and paste the following codes into this file.

    package main

    import (
        "encoding/json"
        "fmt"
        "io/ioutil"
        "net/http"
    )

    func main() {
        accessKey := "YOUR-ACCESS-KEY"

        url := fmt.Sprintf("https://api.ipstack.com/check?access_key=%s", accessKey)

        response, err := http.Get(url)
        if err != nil {
            fmt.Printf("Error: ", err.Error())
            return
        }
        defer response.Body.Close()

        body, err := ioutil.ReadAll(response.Body)
        if err != nil {
            fmt.Printf("Error: %s\n", err.Error())
            return
        }

        var data map[string]interface{}
        err = json.Unmarshal(body, &data)
        if err != nil {
            fmt.Printf("Error: %s\n", err.Error())
            return
        }

        ip := data["ip"].(string)
        countryName := data["country_name"].(string)
        city := data["city"].(string)

        fmt.Println("IP: ", ip)
        fmt.Println("Country Name: ", countryName)
        fmt.Println("City: ", city)
    }
                

Let's put our own API key in the 'YOUR-ACCESS-KEY' field and run the following command in the terminal, which will run our application.

    go run ip-address-tracker.go
                

After running the application, the output in the console of the application is as follows.

    IP: 85.214.132.117
    Country Name: Germany
    City: Berlin
                

Conclusion

To summarize, IP address tracking has become very popular nowadays. This process has reached levels that can be realized in milliseconds today. Among the many IP address APIs that provide these operations to businesses, businesses can use the most reliable and fastest one.

Use the best IP address API in 2023, and track your visitors' IP addresses just in milliseconds!

FAQs

Q: What is the IP Address Validation API?

A: The IP Address Verification API is a fairly common programming interface used to verify whether a given IP address is valid. This API uses various methods to check the authenticity of an IP address and detect invalid or incorrect IP addresses.

Q: What Fields are Included in the Address Data Provided by the ipstack API?

A: The address data provided by the ipstack API has more than one unique field. Some of these fields are as follows:

• Country name
• Country code
• Latitude
• Longitude
• Region name
• Region code
• Timezone
• Currency

Q: Is ipstack a Free IP Address API?

A: Yes, it is. The ipstack API has a free subscription plan that offers developers and businesses up to 100 requests per month for free.

Q: How to Track IP Addresses from the Website?

A: The current best way to track visitors' IP addresses from a website is to use an IP address API. IP address APIs simply and quickly provide the requester's IP address information to businesses and developers.