[deanhills]

I'm VERY confused - hopefully someone can help me out of this.  A friend of mine got a new VPS from Contabo.  BTW it's a brilliant Host with some awesome reviews.  So not a fly by night operator.  It's VERY solid with some very great offers and has been around for several years.

I'm confused though.  Contabo is working with servers in two Datacenters in Germany.  BUT the IP that came with the VPS is located in Buffalo, New York.

How does all of this work?  Like is the VPS location in Germany or the US?  If I create a Website is the Website with the Buffalo IP in the US or in Germany?

How is it going to work with SEO?

[Mashiro]

If the data center where the physical server is located at is in Germany your VPS is also located in Germany.

IP geolocation is nothing special these days. It is often set by big companies who own a lot of IP address space and want to make it clear where they're based from like the U.S. even if they provide service out of multiple locations all around the world. Most of the time it also happens to be wrong because IP addresses change owners and sometimes information is not properly updated or forgotten. The IP address block might change owners and travel to France, Germany or another European country but will still have the old geolocation country U.S. set.

And the other hand of this is that not call the geolocation databases are accurate. Sometimes I see even Google telling me multiple locations for my IP address that is the same for days (4 days until a force reconnect to change IPs from ISP). In the past it was even worse. Google would detect German IPs from DTAG as Chinese IPs and other obscure countries and other times (still happens) as simply Unknown. I have no idea what kind of geolocation database they use. Probably their own meanwhole and they might have started build it some time ago hence why it was so bad at detecting addresses before.

Whatever. I'm talking to much. The location is German if the data center is in Germany. Geolocation is just useless way of telling an IP address to act like being from a certain country. It can have negative effects if websites and services use geolocation detection to do region restriction, switching to better servers (in such a case a wrong geolocation would do the opposite and mostly change to worse servers) and other things like displaying content in different languages.

[coreyman]

The geolocation mishap can also happen if a provider rents ip space to a company and the leasee BGP announces them in a different country.

[AmirGT]

That's called IP geolocation. OVH provides that with every VPS you got for additional cost, for example if my server is located in Roubaix I can buy another geolocation IP in Finland so if you tried to lookup the IP you'll find that its Finnish, how its Finnish and OVH doesn't provide Finnish location? Thats it :p so I suggest you to use check-host.net website to check the IP location, also you may check the whois if you can see many locations. Another idea is to ping the IP from American and European servers, you can use mtr.sh for this mission.

[deanhills]

That's called IP geolocation. OVH provides that with every VPS you got for additional cost, for example if my server is located in Roubaix I can buy another geolocation IP in Finland so if you tried to lookup the IP you'll find that its Finnish, how its Finnish and OVH doesn't provide Finnish location? Thats it :p so I suggest you to use check-host.net website to check the IP location, also you may check the whois if you can see many locations. Another idea is to ping the IP from American and European servers, you can use mtr.sh for this mission.

Not quite.  The Buffalo, NY IP for the German DataCenter VPS is not an optional IP, it is the main IP that comes with the VPS.  Yes, Contabo is quite awesome in that it is very generous with offering additional IPs at 2 Euro per month for each IP address - I'm quite blown away with this.  One can get as many as 20 additional IPs for a VPS and 100 additional IPs for a dedi:
Source: https://contabo.com/?show=faq#1

BUT!  I think I partially solved the problem.  How Contabo does it is very simple.  They use three name servers with geo location in Germany. The name servers are provided to you with your VPS details.  Here are their name servers - looks like they have a large number of those and maybe that's how your VPS is connected with the DataCenter in Germany even when your IP is from the US:
https://dnslytics.com/ip/79.143.182.242

I still think there is going to be an issue with SEO though.  If you expected to get a VPS with location in Germany and your SEO traffic was set for Germany in the past, you may find a drop in German traffic and an increase in US traffic.  Here is an article I found on the Web that tested it for the UK and found that to be true - in the end geo location does matter for SEO:
https://builtvisible.com/ip-location-search-results/

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[...] The location is German if the data center is in Germany. Geolocation is just useless way of telling an IP address to act like being from a certain country. It can have negative effects if websites and services use geolocation detection to do region restriction, switching to better servers (in such a case a wrong geolocation would do the opposite and mostly change to worse servers) and other things like displaying content in different languages.

Got it thanks @"Hidden Refuge".  VPS is in Germany.

So far the only issue is someone who is very focused on SEO traffic and signed up with Contabo for German traffic and seeing a drop in traffic.  It's been proven geo location does matter for SEO:
https://builtvisible.com/ip-location-search-results/

If I should get a VPS from Contabo one day I think I'll ask them whether I may get a German IP and will be interesting what their response will be.  When I did research, looked as though they were tight with IPv4s at one stage of their history and then all of a sudden there was an announcement where one can get as many as 20 additional IPs for a VPS and 100 IPs for a dedi.  Maybe they found a source in the US to top up their supply of IPs?

[humanpuff69]

when you buy the vps you probably showed the location of the vps . that is probably where but for ip locaton it can be that the ip is owned by buffalo us location but the vps in germany . ir eally dont know . but before my post there are some explanation

[deanhills]

when you buy the vps you probably showed the location of the vps . that is probably where but for ip locaton it can be that the ip is owned by buffalo us location but the vps in germany . ir eally dont know . but before my post there are some explanation

I think you need to read the discussion completely before you respond as you missed quite a bit of important information.  The IP location is definitely Buffalo, NY. You can't change that, nor misread it - it is what it is - an IP from the US. If you do a speed test it will show as a speed test from Buffalo, NY US. The VPS content is in Germany with the DataCenter and there is an association with the DataCenter through their name servers - but it can't change the IP that is given - the geo location of the IP will always be the US.

Everything works OK except for the effect it may have on traffic - which is logical in a sense.  If you sign up with Contabo for a location in Germany, because your main traffic is in Germany, you may get a decrease in traffic if Contabo gave you a US IP.  If you check the article above that I quoted (link posted below again for convenience) - this happened to someone in the UK.  He was given a US IP at a UK Data Center.  He was very SEO focused and since signed up with a UK Data Center didn't expect an IP that would be US - he didn't think to check - until the traffic for his Website went down in the UK.  He then tested it and found (a) he was given a US IP (b) the traffic in the UK decreased and © the traffic in the US increased.  So traffic wise geo location of an IP does make a difference.  Here is a link to the UK blog article:
https://builtvisible.com/ip-location-search-results/

[Vuluts]

@deanhills So you were saying that even though the VPS is located in Germany, traffic are still base in US? This might be a interesting situations for those other VPS owner that have the same situation with your friend.

[deanhills]

@deanhills So you were saying that even though the VPS is located in Germany, traffic are still base in US? This might be a interesting situations for those other VPS owner that have the same situation with your friend.

Agreed @Vuluts.  What I'm saying is that someone with a Host in the UK, and who previously had X traffic from the UK, found that after his IP had been changed to the US by a Host in the UK (expecting that it would be a UK IP), that he found a drop in traffic in the UK.  Like there's still traffic, but the normal traffic he had decreased, and the traffic in the US increased.

I think it's important if traffic is important, to make sure that one's IP is geologically positioned to match where one wants one's location for traffic to be.

So the lesson out of this for me is that if I'm hoping for a German location, and I apply for an account with a German host, I will ask first to confirm I'll be getting a German IP.  If they say they can't give me one, then I'd have to look elsewhere.  However, if German location is not that very important, and in fact one likes a US global exposure, then the US IP would be perfect. 

I checked my ISP speed with the Contabo VPS and compared it with a Virmach Mirror for Buffalo, NY.  Speed with Virmach is 265ms  - whereas Contabo is 215ms.  Looks as though Contabo is beating Virmach for networking and latency.  Which is not saying Virmach is slow - as my experience with my VPS 9 is super fast.  Just says Contabo is faster.  I can feel it when I work with my VPS 9 speed vs the VPS from Contabo.  Contabo works lightning fast for me.  Probably together with the Contabo name servers and well they seem to have their networking perfect. 

So far I can really recommend Contabo.  Am itching to get a VPS but am going to wait for the Black Friday offers before I get carried away here.

[AmirGT]

The country of any IP can be changed in any second, my friend owns an ASN and he changed /30 IPv4 to Antarctica, if I got a server from him with that IP, does that mean that my VPS is located in AQ? Surely not, its located where his hardware located so if he put it in Hetzner FSN Datacentre so my server is in Germany and Germans will get good ping to it and the IP will remains in AQ until my friend changes the IP's country or he sells the ASN to somebody else so the new owner will be able to change the country again.