webmaster resources

What is IP filtering and how it works? Every computer which is connected to the Internet is assigned an IP (Internet Protocol) address, which is more or less a unique identity of the computer (or the computer network). The IP address is a combination of numbers and the numbers are assigned in blocks of numbers per country. Currently there are approximately 2.8 billion IP addresses in use.

Through the IP address it is therefore possible to determine the country (and other location data) of your visitors.

By using an IP filtering service you can allow or block your visitors by their country. For instance if you want - for some reason - that only US visitors can reach your website (i.e. you only ship to US), then you have to check the IP address of each visitor and lookup their country in the IP - Country database.

TrafficCleaner simplifies IP filtering as:

you don't need to install any software on your server
you don't need to install any database on your server
you don't need to update an IP database (TrafficCleaner IP database is continuously updated and refreshed for you!)
you don't need to harmonize with any technical requirements
You simply place a short html code in your web pages and set which countries to accept and/or to block in your TrafficCleaner account settings and you are done. TrafficCleaner IP filtering service is completely transparent for you and visitors do not even notice anything. How it works?

You signup for a FREE TrafficCleaner account.

Login to your account and define your settings. You can set from which countries you want to accept visitors and from which countries you want to block them. You can also set where the allowed and the NOT allowed traffic should have to be forwarded. You can set up multiple filters in order to send traffic from different countries to different URLs. Place a small javascript code into your pages.

From now on, when someone visits your website, his country will be checked (based on the visitor's IP address). If his country is allowed according to your settings, then nothing will happen and the visitor can browse your site as normal. But if his country is listed on your NOT allowed countries list, then the visitor will be "deviated" according to your settings, even before your original website is loaded. Through this technique, the NOT allowed visitor will not even be surprised, as he will not notice any abnormal browsing experience. Why is TrafficCleaner triple search engines safe?

TrafficCleaner handles the search engines issue very importantly.

First of all, the code you will have to paste into your website(s) is a simple html code and has no influence or whatsoever on "spidering". The code does NOT contain any elements (i.e. redirecting) that may be considered "dangerous" from a search engines optimization point of view.

Further, we use an IFrame technique to check your visitors IP addresses. This technique ensures that the IP checking happens directly on your site (the visitor does not leave your site!).

Thirdly, TrafficCleaner never filters search engines, regardless of your "Filter settings". No matter from which country a search engine spider visits your site, TrafficCleaner will not interfere/disturb the spider crawling your site. To ensure this we use a double checking technique to identify search engines: first the IP address is checked, then the user-agent field is checked too, thus allowing to accurately determine if the visitor is a search engine or not. Why should you use IP filtering?

There are at least 5 prominent reasons for it:

Cut down your costs
More visitors to your site do not always mean more sales, BUT always mean more costs! It can be exactly tracked and analyzed how much money a visitor costs to you (every visitor uses server resources, bandwidth, etc. - no matter if they are potential buyers/clients or not).

Now ask a simple question to yourself? How much business have you made so far with customers from Nigeria, etc.? Probably NONE! So why should you continue receiving visitors from country you know will never bring you business or you just do not want to do business with? Through TrafficCleaner you can control the traffic and save costs, which means enhance profits! Enhance your profits
Can you believe that you can make money with the traffic coming from countries you do not want on your site? Simply forward the filtered NOT allowed traffic to a separate page which contains pay per click advertisements (simple html page you have created previously). You will be paid for every click through on one of the placed advertisements and you won’t even have to feel bad about it, because the advertisers opted for receiving traffic from the countries you apparently blocked.

Achieve higher fraud protection
Filtering visitors when they enter to your site is the first level and the most efficient way to fight against frauds. Especially if you are selling goods, services or memberships, you know how much hassle and/or harm spam e-mails or even worst, credit card frauds, can bring to you. Unfortunately some countries are known about being a real pain about these issues. With TrafficCleaner you can easily block these countries and avoid visitors to even land on you site, thus achieving a higher fraud protection.

Make your server run faster (without upgrading)!
If you server is not fast enough, you can lose visitors and sales. It is a proven fact that a visitor waits an average max. 5 seconds for a website to load. If he keeps seeing a blank page after 5 seconds he will most probably leave and go check somewhere else. Considering that you are not doing any sales with specific countries, then why should you let those visitors slow down your server? Through TrafficCleaner you can free up your server resources and make the surfing experience better for the visitors you care about! Any more?
There might be several more reasons why you don't want visitors from one or more countries to reach your site. Here are some:

you ship only to specific countries
you provide a service to specific countries only
you have a sensitive content which can/cannot be seen by visitors of specific countries