We are a business in the US. We are getting a lot of traffic tagged with ‘City’ from India - Hyderabad, Vijayawada, or Bengaluru, even though we verified that the user’s actual address is in the US. Do you know why this happens?
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This situation can occur if Mixpanel is using the IP address of the request to determine geolocation, and that IP address is associated with India (e.g., Hyderabad, Vijayawada, or Bengaluru) rather than the user's actual US location. There are a few common reasons for this: 1. Server-Side Tracking: If your events are being sent from your server (rather than directly from the user's device), Mixpanel will use the IP address of your server to determine geolocation. If your server is hosted in India or is routing traffic through an Indian data center, all events may be tagged with Indian cities, regardless of the user's actual location. This is a common issue with server-side implementations and can be avoided by explicitly setting the user's IP address in the event payload, or by manually setting geolocation properties if you have more accurate data [Geolocation: IP address and location properties].2. VPNs or Proxies: If your users are using VPNs or proxies that route their traffic through India, Mixpanel will see the IP address of the VPN/proxy endpoint and assign the corresponding geolocation. This can result in users physically located in the US appearing as if they are in India [Geolocation FAQ].3. Incorrect IP Address in Payload: If you are manually setting the ip property in your event payloads and it is set to an Indian IP address (intentionally or by mistake), Mixpanel will use that IP for geolocation [GeoIP Enrichment].Recommendation:
If you know the user's actual location, you can manually define the geolocation properties ($city, $region, mp_country_code) in your event or profile payloads. These manually defined properties will take precedence over the location derived from the IP address [Manual Geolocation Tracking].If you want to avoid using the server's IP for geolocation, ensure you are either:
- Sending the user's actual IP address in the ip property, or
- Manually setting the correct geolocation properties in your payloads.If you need to disable geolocation entirely (e.g., to avoid incorrect tagging), you can set the ip property to 0 in your payloads [Disabling Geolocation].
In summary, the most likely cause is that Mixpanel is using an IP address associated with India (from your server, a VPN, or a misconfigured payload) to determine geolocation. Manually setting the correct geolocation properties or ensuring the correct IP is used will resolve this issue.
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