Geo-Targeting (Proxy)
A proxy feature that lets you route requests through IPs in a specific country, region, or city.
Proxy geo-targeting lets you specify the geographic location of the IP address your requests use. Instead of getting a random IP from the pool, you get an IP registered in a specific country or city.
Geo-targeting is configured in the proxy username parameter. Most providers use a syntax like username-country-us or username-city-newYork. The gateway selects an IP from that location's pool and routes your request through it.
Country-level targeting routes through any IP in that country's pool. City-level targeting narrows further - useful for local price checking, local search results, or accessing location-specific content.
Use cases where geo-targeting is necessary: checking prices in a specific market (e-commerce prices vary by country), pulling localized search results (Google shows different results for each country), verifying geo-targeted ads, and accessing content that is restricted to specific regions.
Availability varies by provider and location. Residential pools have broad geographic coverage because they rely on real user devices distributed globally. Datacenter pools are limited to cities where the provider has servers.
Choosing where your traffic appears to come from
Geo targeting means asking for an exit address in a specific place. Providers implement it as parameters attached to your credentials, and the gateway matches your request against the devices currently online in that location.
Granularity descends from country to region to city, and reliability descends with it. A country always has devices online. A specific city depends on who happens to be connected at that moment, which is why city-level requests fail more often and fail intermittently.
Geography also has to agree with the rest of your request. A German exit sending English-language headers and a New York timezone tells the destination that the address and the visitor do not match, and many sites decide on that inconsistency rather than on the address alone.
Country, city and how to fall back
Targeting rides in the login. Add what you need and drop what you do not:
Targeting suffixes
login_c_DE Germany
login_c_DE_city_Berlin Berlin
login_c_US_city_New-York_s_7 New York, held on session 7
# City names use hyphens instead of spaces.
# Country codes are ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, upper case.- Send locale headers that match the country. Half of what makes a page local is Accept-Language, not the address.
- Treat a 400 on a city as a fallback signal: drop to country level, record that you did, and retry the city later.
- For local search results and local pricing, city targeting is the whole point. For general scraping, country level is more reliable and cheaper to run.
- 220+ countries are available on residential. Static products cover 41 for datacenter and 24 for ISP.
Where geo targeting misleads
The address does not set the language
Sites read headers and account settings too. A US exit with Russian headers returns a blend that represents nobody.
City coverage is not constant
It follows devices that are online. Yesterday's working city can be empty today.
Country is not the same as jurisdiction
Routing through a country does not change which laws apply to you or to the data you collect.
Geo targeting does not defeat geo-blocking by itself
Streaming platforms and banks fingerprint more than the address.
Related terms
See this in practice
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