How can I redirect traffic based on the visitor's country?

Ok, I've been searching a lot and I have found this possible solutions. Both use PHP and GeoLiteCountry data to function:

1) Source: Site 2nd Geoip-php script to redirect user based on country

I got problem to install mod_geoip in my server. So I use the most simple method to redirect users. I just use a php script to do it. Here is a script to redirect user based on their countries by using geoip.dat.
[sourcecode language='php']
/**
* Case Study - GeoIP Redirection
*
* @version $Id$
* @package geoip
* @copyright © 2006 Lampix.net
* @author Dragan Dinic
*/
require_once("geoip/geoip.inc");
$gi = geoip_open("geoip/GeoIP.dat",GEOIP_STANDARD);
$country_code = geoip_country_code_by_addr($gi, $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
geoip_close($gi);
if($country_code == 'CS')
{
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header('Location: http://www.example.net/1/');
}
else
{
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header('Location: http://www.example.net/2/');
}
?>
[/sourcecode]
Change the geoip/geoip.inc and geoip/GeoIP.dat path accordingly.
Change if($country_code == 'CS') to your desire country code.
Change header('Location: http://www.example.net/1/'); to your desire URL.
That's it! Easy!

2) Source: How-to use maxMind GeoIP for websites | PHP Forums

Sometimes you need to redirect visitors based on the country they come from. Maxmind provides a great country/IP address database in binary format. The following example will show you how redirect visitors from countries which are not on the "whitelist".

Download the latest Geo data and the class file here


Copy the class file and the GeoIP data file into the same directory where the page is located (most of the time the root directory)


Include the class file inside your page and add the following code to request the country using the following code (below the include statements):

$gi = geoip_open('GeoIP.dat', GEOIP_MEMORY_CACHE);
$country = geoip_country_code_by_addr($gi, $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
geoip_close($gi);

Define some country codes the "whitelist":

$my_countries = array('us', 'ca', 'gb', 'fr', 'de', 'nl');

Next place the following code below the $mycountries array:

if (!in_array(strtolower($country), $my_countries)) {
header('Location: some URL...');
exit;
}


=========================================
=========================================

Guys! I did it!

Ok, so, just to let you know, this is how I did it:

I don't really have ANY experience with PHP, but I started searching everywhere to find a solution. And this seems to have worked:

First, I downloaded MaxMind's GeoIP.dat database from here:

http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCountry/GeoIP.dat.gz Free Version (GeoLiteCountry)

Then I downloaded geoip.inc from here:
http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/.../php/geoip.inc

Then I uploaded those two files to the same directory where my page is located.

I edited my php page and wrote this script inside of it:

Simply change the country codes you want to target in the line:

$my_countries = array('us', 'ca', 'gb', 'fr', 'de', 'nl');

and the URLs for both the targeted traffic and rest traffic where mentioned.

Country Codes can be found here: MaxMind - ISO 3166 Country Codes

Woalah!
Hope this helps!

I just setup the MaxMind free geo redirect script too - works great!

I'm using it to redirect visitors to either Amazon US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, or China.

Anybody have experience with blackhat codebreaker and geolite geoip? I'm trying to implement geoip capability to the bhcb script. Have a problem in the .htaccess rewrite (links.txt -> links.php). It displays the proper links from each country, but still links to the original links.txt instead of using the rewrite links.php country links.
I'm using this concept: Remote Insider Affiliate Marketing Forum - View topic - How to Modify BJ Codebreaker

Any info or suggestions on this??

Power Redirector seems to be a good redirect script, works with different kind of databases

I have done everything here however on my godaddy FTP I can not unzip the GeoIP.dat.gz file and If I unzip it on my computer the GeoIP.dat seems blank and when I upload it the PHP script return an error saying the GeoIP.dat does not exist. Can anyone help this is driving me nuts lol

Thanks for this solution I was looking for something like this as well

You should have ip to country database and find ip address using language you are using and then compare with the database and redirect accordingly

is the .dat file suppose to be uploaded to my mysql data base?

I currently use the open source wordpress, any method can be applied with wordpress?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks again.

Well, in the meantime I had it setup with the Geo Direction (bottom of the page) code and changed the country to suit mine.

If you have ip to country database you can fetch ip address of the visitor using dynamic scripting and you can then redirect using case as per the country found

If you are using cloudflare.com the country short code is automatically available as $_SERVER['HTTP_CF_IPCOUNTRY'] value. Further more it is good for your site speed and also adds another layer of protection

another alternative to geip is ip2location basically same thing though

WHAT DOES IT DO?

- Target Country by IP Address is a complete web-based software that provides webmasters with the ability to redirect/restrict traffic based on the visitor's country of origin.This allows webmasters to promote their services and products in different countries where they have specific distribution and service capabilities in different countries.

- It features an IP exception list, where you can place your trusted IPs for exceptions.

- Blocks certain IP address's from your site and redirects the user to a blocked page.Very simple add the IP range or single IP you want to block then.

- The script should be included in unlimited number of pages on your website so it could redirect visitors to those web pages according to the redirection rules.

- With this script you can create as many "redirection rules" as you want. On the same website, some pages could have different redirection rules than the others. You could use the same databases and the same script. Only you make a new "redirection rules" , just edit the REDIRECTION RULES file. Then include it in your files.

- The country code of the visitors is saved in a cookie or a session variable in order to avoid searching the IP database repeatedly.

- You can specify for each country (or IP database) has a Redirection Rule (a redirection link associated with it). If the visitor`s IP is in an IP database, he is redirected to the redirection link associated with it, or if this one is blank, to the default redirection link.
If this default redirection link is blank too, the page is loaded. If the visitor`s country has no Redirection Rule specified, he is redirected to the default 'reject' link or if this one is blank, the page is loaded.

- It is avalable for IP databses: "Plain text - one file with IP numbers and country code", "Plain text - one file with IP addresses and country code", "MySql dump - one table with IP numbers and country code".- all available at http://www.analysespider.com.

- The free IP2Country database(73% accurate) included in this distribution has only 172
countrieswith 37879 records. it`s by far not as accurate and updated as our commercial database, available at http://www.analysespider.com

- It also creates an array with visitor`s country information

REQUIREMENTS:
Web server with PHP minimum version 4.1.x, optionaly MySql;

FILES:
cr/.htaccess - Apache restriction file, to deny access to cr/ folder, to avoid abuse.
cr/anp_ips.dat - a free IP2Country database - type: Plain text full with IP numbers
cr/anp_ip2country.sql - Sql Dump of the same free database
cr/exceptions_ips.dat - A list of IPs who will be excuded from the redirection. It can only have IP addresses (192.168.0.1) or IP address ranges; Edit this file to add exceptions ip address; Exemple:
128.177.244.100
194.112.94.250;194.112.94.255
cr/blocked_ips.dat - A list of IPs who will be blocked from the redirection. It can only have IP addresses (192.168.0.1) or IP address ranges; Edit this file to add blocked ip address; Exemple:
213.120.148.65
213.120.148.70;213.120.148.123
cr/cr.php - main script file
cr/anp_****.php - aditional functions
cr/cur_re_rules.php - default redirection rules file.
cr/_re_rules.php - redirection rules template file.
cr/Countries.php - Get Country information files
cr/Countries.* - Country information files
cr/flags/* - GIF country flags

IP NUMBERS AND IP ADDRESSES:
The unique 4-part number assigned to each and every computer linked to the Internet (e.g., 207.41.2.111). When you connect to the Internet, your ISP assigns you an IP number for the duration of your connection.
The formula to convert an IP Address of the form A.B.C.D to an IP Number is:
IP Number = A x (256*256*256) + B x (256*256) + C x 256 + D
Which is the same as:
IP Number = A x 16777216 + B x 65536 + C x 256 + D

INSTALL:
- Edit cr/cr.php and modify it as described there.
- Add the next line at the beginning of EVERY PAGE YOU NEED TO REDIRECT VISITORS:

<?PHP $anp_path="cr/"; include($anp_path."cr.php"); ?>

or (if cr/ directory is a level up)

<?PHP $anp_path="../cr/"; include($anp_path."cr.php"); ?>
- If you use MySql, load cr/anp_ip2country.sql into your mysql server:
mysql -u [username] -p
mysql>use [your database]
mysql>source [path to/]anp_ip2country.sql

- If you want a different set of redirection rules in other pages of your website,you could use the same databases and the same script. All you can make a copy of _re_rules.php -> new_re_rules.php,edit new_re_rules.php, just change the REDIRECTION RULES. Then include it in your files with:
<?php $re_rules = "new_re_rules.php"; $anp_path="cr/"; include($anp_path."cr.php"); ?>

THE IP DATABASE
- The free IP -> Country database has data for 172 countries and the dat file size is 851 Kb.
The number of records is 37879 and the number of IP addresses covered is 2,351,067,326 .it`s 73% accurate.
- You can get an updated and optimized IP database from http://www.analysespider.com with data from RIPE, ARIN, APNIC and LARNIC public databases.
It has data for 209 countries and the data file size is 3.06 Mb
At the time when this script was released the number of records was 132,532 and the IP addresses covered were 4,145,812,945.
Target Country by IP Address was designed for this database and we strongly recommend that you install this one. Used with this script is 98% accurate because of the search functions.


TESTING AND DEBUG-ING
To test and debug you need to set in cr/cr.php the constant _DEBUG_MODE to 1: define("_DEBUG_MODE","1") then poin your browser to http://yoursite.com/demo.php. Now play with the configuration, modify redirection rules. When you are satisfied, set _DEBUG_MODE to 2 in order to test how cookies / session vars are saved. When it`s ok set _DEBUG_MODE to 0.


CONFIGURATION TIPS
- If you want to use Target Country by IP Address just to detect the country of your visitor and to get the country details in an array, edit cr/cur_re_rules.php comment out all REDIRECTION RULES and make blank the default redirect and reject links ( =""; ).
Then edit demo.php to see how you can use the country details of your visitor.
Add the next line:
<?php include($anp_path."countries.php"); $anp_cinfo=get_cinfo($anp_country_code);?>

This fields can be used in your scripts: $anp_cinfo["code"] $anp_cinfo["name"] $anp_cinfo["region"] $anp_cinfo["capital"] $anp_cinfo["currency"]
$anp_cinfo["flag_path"] ; The flag image can be generated like this: <img src="<?php echo $anp_cinfo["flag_path"]; ?>" alt="" border="0">

- If you want to restrict access to visitors from XX country,Or you want to block a whole lot of countries but make exceptions for some search spider ip addresses.
You have to add the IP address or the network`s IP range in the cr/exceptions_ips.dat file in order for the visitors to be able to visit your website.

- Blocks certain IP address's from your site and redirects the user to a blocked page.
You have to set :
$bCheckBlocked = true
$anp_blocked_reject_link= an invalid url.

Then Edit blocked_ips.dat,add the IP addresses (197.208.0.1) or IP address ranges you want to block. Exemple:
213.64.128.65
213.64.108.50;213.64.148.13

- If you want to use Target Country by IP Address to safely reject all visitors from country XX and YY and to accept all the other visitors
You must set :
$anp_default_reject_link="";
$anp_default_redirect_link="";

edit the Redirection Rules file(cur_re_rules.php), for country XX uncomment the line and place an invalid url for it (XX=error.php) . Do the same for YY.

- If you need to display language specific pages for Italy and German:
You can set :
$anp_default_reject_link="";
$anp_default_redirect_link="";

edit the Redirection Rules file(cur_re_rules.php), for country IT uncomment the line,
as redirection rule set IT=yourpage_en.htm; Do the same for DE;

I'm certainly no expert on the subject and maybe I'm missing something here but wouldn't the hreflang attribute be a much simpler solution? I know it's primarily aimed at directing visitors to pages in different languages but it's the same principal. Isn't it??

thanks great tips and working

Very nice solution and easy to add ! thank you

Another thing to do would be to use CloudFlare and use the HTTP_CF_IPCOUNTRY header (or something like that... header) that they send and route around with that.

Try out MagestyApps' GeoIP Store & Currency Switcher plugin for Magento