Why is my IP location wrong?

What the map actually represents

IPTestor looks up a public address in its bundled DB-IP Lite City database. The coordinates come from that database; your browser does not grant GPS access for this lookup. Moving a map marker or zooming in does not make the underlying estimate more precise.

A country or city in a lookup result may describe where an address block is associated or used. It does not prove that a particular device or person is at the displayed coordinates. Never use the marker as a street address or as evidence of someone’s whereabouts.

Why a different city can appear

A VPN changes the public exit address observed by a website. A mobile connection can reach the internet through a carrier gateway away from the handset. Address ranges can be reassigned, and databases can update at different times. These are possible explanations; the lookup alone cannot tell you which one applies.

An address used by an anycast service is a particularly poor location benchmark: the same address can be served from multiple network locations. Testing a public resolver address does not establish the location accuracy for a residential subscriber.

A useful troubleshooting sequence

First compare the public IP displayed before and after reconnecting your VPN or changing networks. Record the address version and the date. If the address has not changed, a different-looking map is not evidence of a new VPN exit.

Next compare the ASN and registration record using IPTestor’s Whois tool. A registry’s contact address is registration information, not a second device-location measurement. If you compare another geolocation provider, record its data version and preserve disagreements rather than choosing the result that looks most convenient.

For a suspected error, report the affected address and the expected network location to the data provider. Avoid sending your home address or unnecessary personal details. Corrections to third-party databases may take time and do not immediately update every website.

What IPTestor can and cannot conclude

IPTestor displays the database month alongside results. It leaves missing values unavailable instead of inventing a city, postal code or ISP. A result is useful for understanding the network exit, but this site does not publish a measured city-level accuracy percentage.

Our reproducible lookup checks test address parsing and response behavior. They are not a geographic accuracy study: there is no independently verified ground-truth location for those test addresses.