How accurate can IP Geolocation get?

Since I started working at an IP geolocation startup company, I have come to realise just how misunderstood IP geolocation technology is. In my previous startup, we use to derive location data of a website using an IP address with freely available databases. We would often get inaccurate data which we would ignore as an outlier in the data.

Even now many developers use a free database or an API to detect the IP address of a website visitor and redirect them to different web pages. If you have developed an eCommerce site using WordPress + woo-commerce plugins, it is likely that you are using an IP address to detect the location and change the currency format and other content of your website.

I was talking to one of my developer friend about IP geolocation APIs and he simply stated that it was nothing but a simple database lookup on whois database and it isn’t that accurate. However, it is more complex than a simple data lookup.

I am curious to understand what Indie Hackers think about IP geolocation technology and how do you go about implementing an API or a process to identify a user’s location with an IP address.