---
title: "Using GeoIP information"
date: "2024-02-14T06:18:38+00:00"
summary: "Discover how to leverage GeoIP information on Acquia Cloud Platform Enterprise and Site Factory. Learn to identify visitor countries, enhance targeting, and improve user experiences with MaxMind's database integration."
image:
type: "page"
url: "/acquia-cloud-platform/using-geoip-information"
id: "12b2d182-ac55-410f-ba6c-3690a50f8071"
---

Note

*   The GeoIP feature is available for Cloud Platform Enterprise and Site Factory subscribers who have dedicated load balancers. It isn’t available for Cloud Platform Professional subscribers.
*   This feature is available through the Enterprise Security Package. For more information about this package, visit [Cloud Platform Product Guide](/acquia-cloud-platform/cloud-platform-product-guide "Cloud Platform Product Guide").

The GeoIP feature for Cloud Platform Enterprise and Site Factory uses the [MaxMind GeoLite2 City Database](https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/docs/databases) to identify the country of origin of HTTP requests, based on the request’s IP address. The GeoIP feature obtains the IP address from the `X-Forwarded-For` [header](/acquia-cloud-platform/performance/varnish/headers), or the client IP address if there is no `X-Forwarded-For` [header](/acquia-cloud-platform/performance/varnish/headers). The Cloud Platform infrastructure adds the two-letter country code ([ISO-3166–1 alpha-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2)) in the `X-Geo-Country` header of the HTTP request. If the MaxMind GeoLite2 City Database can’t identify the country from the request IP address, it sets the country code to `AA`. Your website’s back-end code can then use the country code in the header to set your visitor’s country.

The GeoIP feature supports the MaxMind IPv4 and IPv6 country database.

The GeoIP feature doesn’t support region- or city-level IP targeting. Targeting at these levels requires custom development, which is available from Acquia as a Professional Services engagement.

For a client-side application, instead of a Cloud Platform-based solution, see the MaxMind [GeoIP2 JavaScript Client API](https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geolocate-an-ip/client-side-javascript/). For more information, contact [MaxMind](https://www.maxmind.com/en/company/contact-us).

Enabling the GeoIP feature
--------------------------

To enable the GeoIP feature, [create a Support ticket](/service-offerings/support#contact-acquia-support) to request Acquia enable the GeoIP feature for your Cloud Platform Enterprise or Site Factory application. Acquia Support will enable the GeoIP feature for each of your application’s environments by including a `addon-geoip.vcl` in your application’s Varnish® runtime. Updating your Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) file requires restarting Varnish on your dedicated load balancers and clears the Varnish cache, which can result in reduced performance while the cache is rebuilt.

Note

You cannot use the `X-Geo-Country` header in your custom `.vcl` files.