6 ways users optimize IP data to improve use cases

IPinfo turns IP data into meaningful and user-friendly datasets. We do the busywork so you can focus on reliable use cases.

As part of that, we also want our users to have all the necessary tools and resources to get the most value from their IP data.

Here are some ways our users optimize their data to improve their use cases.

1. Test the data

Before deciding on an IP address provider, it’s important to test the data.

Our customers regularly try our data and confirm the accuracy IPinfo is known for. For instance, Adcash, a leading advertising platform, tested our data before using it to build their proprietary solution that’s improved their ability to separate human users from bots.

They also compared IPinfo with the data available from other IP data providers, and this is what they found:

We tested Maxmind - another data source - but only IPinfo actually had accurate data. Plus, IPinfo is probably better in location than Maxmind. - Yonko Tsonev, Head of IT, Adcash

Since then, Adcash has increased its profit by 1-3% by using IPinfo’s data within its service. They’ve also improved profits by 1-10% for CPA advertisers and 5-10% for suppliers.

But one of the important steps Adcash took to improve the value they got from IP data was to try the data first. That’s why IPinfo offers a free weeklong trial for all of our datasets: to give users a chance to try all our insights before committing to a plan.

For more information about getting started with IPinfo, check out this guide.

2. Decide which datasets meet your requirements

The next thing you can do to optimize your IP data is to define which datasets meet your requirements.

Surveyyeah, a survey and research platform, gathers opinions from users around the world. But to ensure accurate results for companies conducting research for future campaigns or students developing theses, they needed to validate users’ locations.

The IP to Geolocation dataset is a good choice for a use case like Surveyyeah’s. But Privacy Detection is also relevant for this use case. Not only did Surveyyeah need to define each user's location, but they also needed to eliminate fraudulent traffic hiding behind VPNs.

If you’re not sure what other insights might make your use case more performant, IPinfo’s data experts are always ready to help. They regularly assist organizations as they develop reliable and optimized use cases.

Here are some of the contextualized insights that might give you more value from your IP data:

Geolocation details such as city, postal code, country, and more.
The ASN associated with the IPs
Company details behind an IP
Associated IPs ranges
IPs that share the same hosting provider
Which IPs are hiding their identity
WHOIS registry data associated with an IP address
Abuse contact information for malicious IPs

Based on your use case, you may need one or more of these insights to get the most from IP address data. While trialing IPinfo, make sure to test each of the datasets you may need for your use case.

3. Choose your data retrieval method

Data retrieval can affect the value of IP data depending on the use case. This is due to the fact that APIs or downloads also influence use case requirements:

Setup time
Response time
Data freshness
Usage volume
Security or critical dependence
Flexible data management
Data processing

Dreamdata is a good example of this. They're a B2B revenue attribution platform that opted for IPinfo's downloadable database. In their case, they needed to integrate raw IP data into their solution.

“The ability to give raw data is one of the strongest features of IPinfo. In reality, their product makes our product better” - Ole Dallerup CTO & Co-founder at Dreamdata.io

While using the database, they've been able to enrich their offering to their customers, providing more insights about their go-to market. The end result is that Dreamdata customers have been able to see more opportunities within the customer journey.

On the other hand, Find Hotel - a price comparison platform for hotel booking - needed the simplicity of an API so they could focus on eliminating web scrapers, bots, and other fraudulent entities while providing hotel transparency around the world.

IPinfo was the fastest and easiest approach to enable identification of private IPs. Their HTTP API proved to be reliable and performant at the scale we needed which allowed us to avoid building and operating our own service. - German Gomez-Herrero, CTO, Find Hotel

Suffice it to say, to get the most value from your IP address data, make sure you’re using the best-fit data retrieval. For instance, some organizations need to look up billions of IPs within their own infrastructure. These organizations often choose Database Downloads.

Other companies need simplicity. They want a quick API request without having to process large amounts of data. These organizations often get the best value from our API. Learn more about our API versus our Database Downloads in this article.

As far as Database Download formats, we also offer several options, including CSV, MMDB, and JSON. If these don’t fit your requirements, we also work with the file formats you need most.

For more information on choosing the best file format, here’s an article that might help: How to choose the best file format for your IPinfo database.

4. Learn about implementing IP data

We offer a variety of resources to make it easy to use IP data.

Resources for executives or product managers

For executives or product managers, we offer a variety of resources, including how-to’s, guides, and tools. Here are some that might be helpful:

Additionally, we offer data insights that help industry-leading organizations make the best decisions with their IP data. For instance, an article about how frequently IP geolocation changes can help organizations choose their database download frequency for best results. Here are a few examples of these data trends we’ve been tracking:

For more resources, check out our how-to resources in our blog or our guides.

Resources for developers

IPinfo is built by developers for developers. We’ve created a variety of tools to help you use IP data more efficiently, including these:

IPinfo also supports a variety of knowledge resources for developers, such as our official documentation. Our official libraries include these and more:

But beyond that, we regularly publish how-to’s on our blog to help developers use IP data better. Here are some of these:

To see more of these articles, check out our #how-to tag on our blog

5. Scale your data with supported integrations

Many of our users get the most value from their IP data by using one of our supported integrations.

Snowflake

Snowflake’s Marketplace allows teams to merge different kinds of datasets. IPinfo has partnered with Snowflake to make IP address data available alongside these insights:

Darkweb compromised sites
Third-party security risk management datasets
Demographics and consumer data
HIPPA-compliant health data
Social determinants of health insights
Global travel data
Political activism insights
Humanitarian aid funding data
B2B data
High tech data

Suffice it to say, there are hundreds of different datasets available within this marketplace. Using these insights alongside IPinfo helps scale data analytics for teams.

Zapier

We recently released our Zapier integration. IPinfo’s customers use Zapier to optimize their data usage in a few ways.

Through Zapier, IPinfo integrates with Google Sheets. This allows our users to pass IP address data stored in Google Sheets to IPinfo. Then they can also store this data in another sheet.

Zapier also allows users to connect Slack to IPinfo. For instance, you can generate a Slackbot that replies with IP geolocation details when summoned with a trigger message.

Another helpful feature within Zapier is that it allows IPinfo users to parse IP information from emails. There are many other ways to use IPinfo’s Zapier integration, but these are just a few. Here are just a few other apps that pair with IPinfo through this integration:

For more information about getting started with IPinfo’s Zapier integration, here’s a resource to help you get started.

6. Get one-on-one support from a data expert

While we’ve tried to build or find easy-to-use optimization tools, we also recognized that not every question can be answered by a website. However, our help center has many of the commonly-asked questions users submit.

But for all other questions, we have a team of data experts who understand IP address data, coding, and use case implementation. In fact, they’re often the ones who write our how-to scripts on our blog.

From the start, the IPinfo team has valued our contribution. The customer service is great—they respond to requests and support tickets and we have an excellent relationship with our account manager. - Anthony Jaggs, Senior Digital Communications Manager, Bupa

Our data experts are used to helping customers optimize their data, choose the best datasets, decide which retrieval option fits each use case, and much more. If you have a question or need help building out your use case, they’re always ready to help!

Have more questions? Connect with a data expert today!