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I'm gathering options for geolocation "personalization" for the following setup:

  • SDL Tridion 2013
  • SmartTarget
  • Ambient Data Framework

The use case would be showing physical locations near a website visitor.

Looking at the Quova ADF extension on SDLTridionWorld, it looks like we can do this with any IP-to-Geographic service. Would an ADF cartridge that did something similar be the right approach for this setup? As far as I can tell, IP addresses are included with the Ambient Data Framework, but what they mean is up to implementation.

Edit: Show locations ...and related content of course.

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3 Answers 3

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As far as my knowledge is concerned, you can only get an IP address from the ADF and you would need some IP-To-Location third party APIs to show the physical location mapped to this IP - I would certainly recommend using some paid service like:

  • MaxMind
  • ip2location

I have worked with these two and results are 98% accurate (as per their claim; I have seen 100% accuracy though) and update in DB is quarterly and proper notification is there.

On the other hand, based on your requirement, you may want to take a decision whether you want to use ADF for IP address or want to use simple C# or Java code to detect IP address at runtime

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ADF would be the right place for it, since you have access to the IP address you can define a Cartridge that performs a look up in a geo location database to get the information that is needed.

ADF is technology agnostic so that cartridge will be available for .NET, Java and CD Web Service (Tridion 2013).

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ADF can help you with this. But, any piece of .NET or Java code on your website could get the ip address and geo location for you. The beauty of ADF is that it is platform independent (ADF cartridges are written in Java) and reusable across Tridion modules and SDL products. For example, find out your approximate geo location, use it as a Trigger in SmartTarget, change it with Tridion Experience Manager too see how your visitor experiences the site and let your webapp use the location in the store locator feature on the website.

How does SmartTarget come in to play in this use case? You mention "The use case would be showing physical locations near a website visitor.". How to you want to target your content with this? Think of the rules you would set up in SmartTarget to specify which promotions (personalized content) match with the geo location of the web visitor.

If your use case is to show locations near a website visitor as in store locations near you, then you might end up with a website feature listing all store locations, with locations near you at the top. This does not necessary use SmartTarget although the geo location claim from ADF can defenately be used in SmartTarget.

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  • Good question on SmartTarget's relevance. Mainly, I know the group's using ADF because of SmartTarget (though ADF is also available with just Content Delivery). I edited to question to include content as a use case as well--the specifics are yet to be determined (or created in FH). :-)
    – Alvin Reyes
    Commented Oct 23, 2013 at 22:41

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