Updated IP-Address Database file for IA

  • JimJam

    (@unrealnfs)


    2 days, 19 hours ago

    Hi there again!
    The file “iawp-geo-db.mmdb” that’s necessary to track the IP addresses for location tracking in IA is too old. I read on your site that its from db-ip.com(Also, can we use maxmind’s lite city-level .mmdb file instead – i haven’t tested it yet).

    Do you suggest to keep using the old file(last update was 2024 Mar) that’s provided on your site or use the latest db file thats available at the below URL? Also, which type would you suggest – “IP to City Lite” or “IP to Country Lite”?

    https://db-ip.com/db/lite.php

    Recently i tried a VPN to check the accuracy of the IP-database used by IA – and i have to say it was not even able to track the countries correctly in most of the tests. I think IA must have reliable IP-Address Database, if not IA would be giving wrong location data.

    Thanks again for this wonderful Analytics plugin made exclusively for WP.

    Best Regards.

    I thought i better do this in one go instead of opening multiple threads – i hope it is appreciated.

    P.S. Here i would like to point to other threads/features just to ping/request for the updates on the same.


    1. User Journey: You guys have made this happen! WoW!

    2. AD-Blocker FIX/Bypass (It can be done!) – IA still gets blocked by Ad-Blocker – i think we can do something about this to get the maximum tracking out of IA. AnalyticsWP uses JS file(analyticswp.min.js) and admin-ajax.php POST Method call – to make this happen.

    I know that IA also uses similar method – but IA has inlined JS code and POST Method call to /wp-json/iawp/search – this one do get blocked by the adblocker while the admin-ajax.php request gets allowed as it is a native feature of WP thats necessary for certain websites to function/load correctly in the frontend – so, blocking WP’s native request can break numerous WP sites – especially because these days major page builders and other themes/plugins make use of admin-ajax.php – hence the ad-blockers lets this POST request through – its a checkmate scenario! I am not an expert – but this is what i understood just by looking at the surface – maybe there could be more to this or not – I will leave that for the experts.

    I always belived IA would fix this, but it didn’t happen. Once if IA could track every user visits – then IA is more than enough – as of now, i am forced to use different methods to get user’s IP to make sure to track all the user visits and get the most accurate geo-local-level Analytics data.

    3. Jetpack Stats – All-time Insights in Independent Analytics – https://wordpress.org/support/topic/jetpack-stats-all-time-insights-in-independent-analytics/

    This was a thread that was opened earlier. I am left wondering what happened about this cool feature – it is almost 7 months now and you too were interested in this back then?!

    4. Core Web Vitals Tracking Feature –

    https://wordpress.org/support/topic/core-web-vitals-tracking-feature/

    I also had opened a thread on this earlier – right now we do have a lot of WP plugins for tracking the user-experience by tracking core-web-vitals – but still having one(for tracking vitals) or 2 more plugins(those plugins that doesnt have location data doesnt give geo-level data vitals report – this is everything as each location gets different experience and it costs SEO by a lot – to track this we need analytics data.

    For good core web vitals – Server Performance, location, CDN, Website Optimization, etc., comes into play a lot here. I think this can be a super big deal especially because majority of the web developers are freaking out when it comes to core-web-vitals. Core web Vitals is as “tracking the Website” while IA is already “Tracking the users” that’s coming to the Website.

    IA can give “COUNTRY-LEVEL” vitals report on a Worldmap styled screen just as the geo report of the users as the location data is already collected by IA – you can definitely give 3 more data points such as:

    1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), 2. Interaction to Next Paint (INP), 3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

    These are purely short digits of numbers – and nothing too lengthy – no bloat for sure and also only countries needs to be tracked and there are hardly around 200 countries – its closer to tracking just 200 users only for a whole new super feature in IA – you can auto-purge/merge the old data at certain points as fresh data is most needed when it comes to tracking core web vitals!

    https://www.debugbear.com/real-user-monitoring


    Thanks again for the wonderful IA and your attention.
    Great Day!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Author Ben Sibley

    (@bensibley)

    1 day, 3 hours ago

    Hi there,

    The geo database was last updated on January 19, 2026 in the plugin. It looks like the link on our site is out of date, but the library that gets used in the plugin is recent. It should have no trouble getting the correct country. City level data is more difficult and is accurate ~66% of the time. When the city is incorrect, it fetches a neighboring city. You could replace the file we use with the more accurate city level file if you want. We don’t use that because the file is much larger, and I believe the licensing might be different.

    Using an Ajax request to circumvent ad blocking is an interesting idea. We will look into this to see if it could prevent ad blockers from blocking our requests. My concern is that these browser extensions have access to everything, so they will probably find a different way to block the request, like potentially checking what’s in the request before blocking it. Either way, it’s worth investigating, so thank you for bringing that to our attention!

    We haven’t been able to work on the Jetpack-style chart yet. Sorry that we haven’t made progress on that. We always have a big stack of new features and updates to get through, lots of which we intend to include, but it takes time.

    In regards to the web core vitals tracking, this is another feature that we just haven’t had time to explore yet. It is a big feature, so it’s something that we might consider “out of scope” for Independent Analytics, and could be better suited in a separate plugin.

    Thread Starter JimJam

    (@unrealnfs)

    21 hours, 54 minutes ago

    Thanks for the update.
    Here are some info: I think the ad-blocker guys have blocked this path “/wp-json/iawp/search” so maybe thats the reason why IA gets blocked while AnalyticsWP is getting through – if not i cant find any other reason – unless AWP does some sort of constant-alteration(s) on each loading of its script. They are always in look-out for stopping all the analytics apps – so, only checkmate works with them!

    Jetpack Stats – i will wait for this – but, this is a big deal – so make it happen. Having a table that has aggregated data even if those days/years entire data is deleted would still work. If you store 12 aggregated data – you get a whole year’s data for making this chart. Just few KBs of data can do this magic.

    Core Web Vitals Tracking – forget about it – i am making an inhouse plugin – for tracking not only worldwide visits(Geo-level) per URL as google expects more than in the range of 75% of the visitors to a page get good score for it to consider as good page-score-vitals —– also something that would track “location-level” – which will come in handy for website performance monitoring, etc. – which would only track a single page(homepage will do) from all across the world – each country as an when a visitor visits – will highlight which location needs attention and plan the server infrastrcuture accordingly.

    A QUICK QUESTION – i don’t remember much – i made a quick run-through and i think i found that you are hash(MD5)-ing out all the user IP information entirely! Am i wrong? If you wanted to give privacy for the site visitors – even hiding the last unit in the IP4 is fine and similarly for IP6 – but make sure that city data doesnt gets destroyed – for this is so valuable – as we can do a lots of good stuffs with it like targeting city(other users) for sales, etc – as some locations as good at converting – its gold like data! I dont know much about the law and other such stuffs – but even the bunnyCDN allows us to store all the CDN logs with or without certain portion of IPs removed – and they are 100% following the law i am sure. cant just destroy the local-location data – forget about user data though which is what guys like google/facebook is after – which we dont want.

    If you are hashing user’s IP please do reconsider other methods such as what i just mentioned. If you are not hashing out IPs point me to where this info is stored in the database.

    Thanks a lot.
    Great Day!

    Thread Starter JimJam

    (@unrealnfs)

    11 hours, 8 minutes ago

    P.S.
    Here is something i heard from the AI today while i was seeking certain answers – since i mentioned to you about the same earlier i thought i better ping you with the same though you would be knowing about this.

    Gemini AI 3.1 Pro – told me:

    AnalyticsWP (/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php): This is the legacy WordPress method. It is extremely heavy on the CPU. Every time a ping hits admin-ajax.php, WordPress loads the entire core, initializes almost every plugin, and runs backend hooks. For high-volume analytics, this is a terrible architectural choice and causes server spikes.

    Independent Analytics (/wp-json/iawp/search): This uses the modern WordPress REST API. It is significantly lighter than admin-ajax.php. It still loads WordPress core, but it bypasses heavy admin panels and legacy hooks.

    Plugin Author Ben Sibley

    (@bensibley)

    4 hours, 3 minutes ago

    Thanks for the additional feedback. We are moving as quickly as we can.

    It’s important that the IP addresses are fully obfuscated and stored in a format that they could never be returned to their original state. We get the visitor’s geolocation using their IP address first, and then save the generated ID instead of their IP address. Their location is saved in the database as well.

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