The GeoIP lookup automation action can be used to perform a geolocation (geo-ip) lookup for any IP address, domain name, email address or URL. The lookup returns the Country name, Country code, City, Region & Organization name for any IP address. The values returned can then be used further in your automation workflow.

In the Lookup field enter any text or %variable%. If the field contains an IP address then this will be used. If no IP address is found then the first email address will be used. If no email address then the first URL. If an email address/domain name is used then ThinkAutomation will first perform a reverse DNS lookup to find the IP address and then use that to do the Geo IP lookup.

You can then assign the Country, Country Code, Region, City & Organization to variables

The Organization will be the organization that controls the IP address. In most cases this will be an ISP. For larger organizations assigned their own IP range, it will be the actual organization name.

For API received messages the remote host (IP Address) is added to the Message Headers. You can access this using the built-in variable %Msg_FromIP%.

<h5id=”geolocation-lookup-use-cases”>Geolocation Lookup Use Cases

• Risk analysis – check that the Geo-IP country of a customer email address matches the country the customer specified on an order form.
• Country analysis – lookup country information for each received email and record in a database for later analysis.
• Localization – when returning auto-responses to emails, web forms or web chat you can return a different response depending on the location.
• This Action is also useful when receiving messages via the API – from web forms, web chat, or web requests. It allows you to obtain Geo IP information for the user making the request. You can return a different response depending on the location. The originating IP address will be in the %Msg_FromIP% variable.

This Action uses ThinkAutomation’s own GeoIP database installed locally. This is updated on a regular basis. Geolocation data is supplied by DB-IP.