How do websites know what town you are in?

Question

There will be ads on like tv-links.cc or MySpace, ect that say "Find dates in xxxx (my town name)!" how does it know what town I am in? I access the internet through a router, so how does it work?

Answer 1

They log your IP address. An IP address is like a mailing address, the information needs to know where it's going. THey can use that information to get a general idea of where you're located.

Answer 2

Based on your IP address.

http://whatismyipaddress.com/

Answer 3

Its from the IP address, they can read which town(city) it is.

Answer 4

Every computer on the net has an IP address. A part of the IP is the code for the country and the town you're connecting from.

Answer 5

It logs your ip which is the specific number for your computer assigned by your internet service provider (comcast, adelphia etc.). Its pretty easy to install this as html in any website. I have google analytics on my website which tells me what town you are in, what your ip address is, what version of windows your computer has, what screen resolution your computer is set to, how long you stayed on my site, how many pages on my site you visited and for how long for each page, what link brought you to my site or what search term in google did you search for that brought you there, if your a new visitor or a returning one and how many times youve been to my site, wether you are using 32 bit or 24 bit screen colors on your computer, and what browser you are using (internet explorer, mozilla firefox etc.). Most websites have analytics on them now.

Answer 6

They read your IP address, look at the location you live in, then post it in the ad.

Answer 7

If it is for a specific website you registered with or log into or that you previously selected a city or zipcode for they can tell from site registration or cookies for that domain.

They cannot always tell exactly from who owns your public IP address, although, tracing the route to that IP may offer some clues for a best guess, and is often used to load balance a server near you for nationwide or worldwide sites.  Although, the nearest that would reveal for anyone tracing me is Elmhurst, IL, although, I am in a different Chicago suburb.