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Why does my IP address show the wrong location, and how do I get it fixed?

Your IP address carries no coordinates. Sites look it up in a database, and those databases guess. Here is where the guess comes from and who can change it.

By peekip editorialLast checked 5 Oct 20264 min read6 sources
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Short answer

A site that says you are in the wrong city looked your IP address up in a geolocation database. The database guessed from registry records, your ISP’s own published data and its own measurements. The durable fix is usually your ISP publishing (or correcting) its geofeed; correction forms at individual databases help, but your address may be reassigned.

An IP address has no location in it

An IP address is a number your internet provider lends you so traffic can find its way back. Nothing inside it says “Denver” or “Leeds”. When a site shows your city, it took your address, looked it up in a geolocation database, and showed you the database’s best guess. Different sites buy different databases, so two sites can disagree about you on the same afternoon.

Google says it plainly in its own help pages: IP addresses are “roughly based on geography”, so any site you use can learn something about your general area, and nothing more precise than that from the address alone.[4]

Where the databases get their guess

RegistryWho holds the blockThe regional registry record says which organisation holds the address range and its country.
ISPWhat the ISP publishesSome ISPs publish a geofeed: a CSV that maps each of their ranges to a country, region and city.[1]
VendorThe database’s modelEach vendor combines those inputs with its own measurements and corrections.
The siteWhat you seeThe site shows the vendor’s answer, sometimes cached for weeks.

The ISP’s own file matters most. RFC 8805 defines the format: one line per range with the fields ip_prefix,alpha2code,region,city,postal_code.[1] RFC 9632 then explains how a database finds that file: the ISP points to it from its registry record with a geofeed: attribute or a remarks: Geofeed https://… line, and the file must be served over HTTPS.[2]

Note what RFC 8805 tells the databases: they “MAY treat published feed data as a hint only”.[1] Publishing a correct feed makes the right answer likely, not guaranteed.

The usual reasons it is wrong

CauseWhat you seeWhat fixes it
Your traffic leaves through a regional gatewayA big city hundreds of kilometres away, often the same one for many customersThe ISP’s geofeed, which usually names the gateway city on purpose
The range moved but the database didn’t noticeAn old city, or another countryA correction to the vendor, and the ISP updating its feed
A VPN, iCloud Private Relay or a work proxyThe location of the exit serverTurning it off for that site, or nothing: this is how they work
The block is registered abroadYour ISP’s head-office countryThe ISP’s geofeed, which overrides the registry country

Mobile and fixed-wireless providers are a common case. T-Mobile US, for example, publishes a geofeed that maps blocks of addresses to gateway cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas and New York rather than to where each customer sits.[6] If your database follows that feed, it will say “Dallas” and be, by its own rules, correct.

What to do, in order

  1. Check what each source says. If two sources agree on the right city and one is wrong, you only need to fix one vendor. If they all say the same wrong city, the cause is upstream, usually the ISP’s gateway or its feed.
  2. Ask your ISP about its geofeed. If the ISP publishes one, ask them to correct the line for your range. If they don’t, point them at RFC 8805 and RFC 9632.[1][2] This is the fix that lasts, because every database that reads feeds picks it up.
  3. Submit corrections to the vendors you can name. MaxMind takes corrections through a form, and warns that if you are correcting your own address it “may be frequently reallocated or shared with other people who are spread out over a large geographic area”.[3] Google has its own form for when your IP makes Google products show the wrong country; it says updates can take more than a month.[5]
  4. For one stubborn site, contact that site. Many sites let a signed-in user set a location, which beats any IP lookup.
Run it on yours

See which sources disagree

The Truth Check looks your connection up in several sources and shows which ones place you where.

Open the Truth Check

What not to expect

  • A street address. Databases estimate an area. None of them can see your home from your IP, and a correction won’t make them more precise than a city.
  • An instant change. Vendors publish on their own schedule, and sites cache their copy. Weeks is normal.
  • One fix for every site. Each site picks its own database. The ISP’s feed is the closest thing to a single fix, which is why it comes first.

Sources

  1. RFC 8805: A Format for Self-Published IP Geolocation Feeds (Aug 2020) · IETF / RFC EditorChecked 5 Oct 2026
  2. RFC 9632: Finding and Using Geofeed Data (Aug 2024) · IETF / RFC EditorChecked 5 Oct 2026
  3. GeoIP location correction · MaxMindChecked 5 Oct 2026
  4. Understand & manage your location when you search on Google · Google Search HelpChecked 5 Oct 2026
  5. Report an IP address problem with Google products · Google Search HelpChecked 5 Oct 2026
  6. T-Mobile US geofeed (RFC 8805, “lastupdated 2026-06-29”) · T-Mobile US on GitHubChecked 5 Oct 2026