Get IP reputation and fraud risk analysis to monitor suspicious activity or a digital marketer optimizing your ad delivery, you know the importance of IP address lookup. This seemingly innocuous sequence of numbers holds a wealth of critical information, including geographical origin and network provider.

But with so many  services available, how do you choose the best one? In this article, we’ll explore the top tools for gaining accurate location-related insights from an IP address, and learn about their advantages and disadvantages.

Overview of IP Lookup Tools

A popular and reliable tool for identifying the geographic location of an IP address, IP lookup APIs use a combination of border gateway protocol (BGP) routing tables and domain name system (DNS) resolution to pinpoint an Internet-connected device’s country, city, latitude, and longitude. These types of data-rich results are often queried by technical users, system administrators, and cybersecurity professionals as they conduct infosec investigations surrounding phishing websites, spamming, and DNS attacks.

Aside from providing valuable security-related insights, IP lookup tools can also improve business processes and enhance marketing initiatives by allowing businesses to deliver customized content tailored to users’ location. This way, marketers can ensure that their messages are relevant to a particular audience, increasing brand awareness and strengthening customer engagement. Moreover, security teams can benefit from using IP geolocation by receiving real-time threat intelligence and enhancing incident response capabilities by pinpointing the source of an attack. This allows them to identify a cyber threat and take action promptly to prevent it from spreading.