Short answer

If the country is right but the city is wrong, the database probably knows the network's broad region but not your device's location. If a VPN is active, the displayed place should describe the VPN exit. If mobile data and Wi-Fi show different places, each provider is routing you through a different public gateway.

Check the public route and approximate location visible to this site →

Match the symptom to a likely cause

Wrong city, correct ISPStale or coarse geolocation record, or traffic exiting through a regional gateway
VPN city appearsExpected: websites see the VPN exit route
Mobile data jumps citiesCarrier aggregation or a distant mobile gateway
Two sites disagreeThey may use different geolocation databases or refresh schedules
Exact location after a promptThe site may be using browser geolocation with permission, not IP geolocation

Diagnose it in five minutes

  1. Record the public IP, network owner, and approximate city on your normal Wi-Fi connection.
  2. Turn off any VPN or proxy you control and repeat the check. Do not disable an employer-required security route.
  3. Compare with mobile data. A different city on each network points to provider routing or database records rather than a device GPS problem.
  4. Check the same public IP with a second geolocation provider. Disagreement confirms that the location is an estimate, though agreement does not make it precise.
  5. If only one website is wrong, ask which provider it uses before submitting a correction.

Restarting a router may produce a different dynamic IP, but it does not repair the underlying database and may return an address with the same stale mapping.

Which provider does this site use?

MyIPCheckup receives the location estimate from Cloudflare’s request metadata. It does not query MaxMind directly. The city and country describe the public request route; the Cloudflare data-center code is where that request was handled, not your location.

  1. Run What Is My IP? and note the public IP, displayed city/country and time. Repeat on the same connection so you are comparing the same address.
  2. For an incorrect estimate shown here, follow Cloudflare’s correction instructions. Review what the form requests before submitting; nothing is sent by this guide.
  3. For another website, ask that website which database supplies its result. A MaxMind correction only addresses MaxMind’s records; it does not update every provider.
  4. After a correction, check the same IP again. Approval, timing and agreement across providers are not guaranteed; mobile or dynamic IPs may change meanwhile.

If location fields are unavailable, this tool reports no estimate. That is not evidence that a database is correct or that the connection is anonymous.

How to correct the result

Send the correction to the geolocation provider used by the affected service. Major providers publish correction forms; include the public IP or prefix, the correct country/region/city, and evidence they request. If several providers are wrong, contact each one because their databases are independent.

If you operate the network prefix, publish an RFC 8805 geofeed and register it through the appropriate routing or registry channel. If you are a residential customer, ask your ISP's network team to correct its geolocation records or geofeed. MyIPCheckup can show the estimate it receives; it cannot edit another provider's database.

What IP location should not decide

City-level IP geolocation is network context, not proof of residence, identity, device position, or account ownership. Avoid using it alone for legal, fraud, emergency, delivery-address, or security decisions. Browser geolocation is a separate API that normally requires permission and may use GPS, Wi-Fi, or other device signals.

Primary references and correction paths

MaxMind's correction guidance explains how a user can report an incorrect IP location. RFC 8805 defines geofeed data. MDN's Geolocation API guide explains the separate permission-based browser location mechanism.