Geo Targeted Content: Why don't more sites use it?

[PokerProp]

I've been spending a lot of time adding geo-functions to my sites.
Things like:

• only showing us flags to US players.
• showing different banners to different locations
• Adding US players not accepted images and sections with a recommendation just to US players
• etc. etc.

After spending a lot of time doing this I started to wonder why more sites are not. I don't care personally if sites do or don't. It just that I keep visiting websites and seeing ad after ad for poker rooms that I can't play at so i started thinking perhaps there is some disadvantageous to geo ads I am not thinking of because otherwise it seems a lot more sites would use them.

So far the only disadvantage I can think of is the extra database hit.
Are there other disadvantages I'm not thinking of? If so, what are they?

[corpfan1]

Interesting post.

I hope to hear opinions from more programmers/SEO gurus out there.



As for me, I am not that advanced on HTML and Scripts, so I am not exactly sure how to do it to suit my needs.

Maybe we should have a PAW Tutorial section to help people with things like this. People who know more can post and get some backlinks and those who need the info will benefit. I see this idea as a WIN FOR ALL.

[ThePokerBank]

Yeah this is a really interesting post.

I tried to use Open-ads for a while but it used to produce long and scary links, and I really prefer using simple php redirects like .com/go/pokerroom/ and I couldnt get it to work very well with that so I jus left it out. I know you can use that for geotargetting with ads but I never got around to it. I suppose If I found something that could help me geo-target more easily I would.

Titan Poker used to have a free script thing that allowed you to rotate banners depending on whether or not your visitors were from US or not, but that wen't a little funny for me so I dropped it, not sure if its working now though.

But yeah, if I found a way to geo-target efficiently then I would definitely work with it. I don't know how to code or anything so the whole geo-targetting thing has been on the back burner for a while.

What are you using? Or are you coding yourself?

[PokerProp]

I'm using ip2nation database to call visitors location and than doing a simple
If Certain Country / If else code in PHP.

[pokerforfree]

This is something I've planned to do for quite some time, but since time lacks I have let the idea slip away.

I am sure it will be very valuable if done the right way, specially for showing the right rooms to US players.

Heck, you got me motivated and I will schedule this in soon

THANKS!!!

Giorgio