Taking geo-analyses with a grain of salt
Under Basic Reports → Location → Geo, reports can be called up according to the dimensions country, region (federal state) and city. The location is determined on the basis of the anonymised IP address, which allows conclusions to be drawn about the dial-up node or router. Ideally, this is only a few kilometres away from the user’s actual location, but it can also deviate by several hundred kilometres. According to IPLocation.net, the accuracy of IP-based geolocation is around 95 to 99% for a country, 55 to 80% for a region (state) and only 50 to 75% for a city.
The reason for deviations lies in the use of VPNs, remote access via corporate networks and so-called ISP routing.
A more precise determination of the location is offered by the HTML5 approach, which, however, requires the explicit consent of the user and is thus practically unusable for web analysis. In this respect, it is important to understand the information as the best possible orientation aid to detect regional peculiarities, despite its vagueness.