Glossary · Data collection
Geo-targeting
Geo-targeting, for proxies, is choosing the country, region or city your request exits from, so a website serves you the prices, language, search results and availability it shows to people in that location.
Reviewed 30 Oct 2026
USERNAME_pool-arcfast_country-de_city-munichUSERNAME_pool-arc_country-us_city-newyorkUSERNAME_pool-arcultra_country-jpHow sites decide where you are
Mostly from the IP address, looked up in geolocation databases. Network operators can publish their own mapping of prefixes to locations as a geofeed (RFC 8805): a country as an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, optionally a region and a city. The format is deliberately coarse, and commercial databases add their own inference on top, so they do not always agree.
The address is not the only signal. Accept-Language, cookies from an earlier visit, a stored account country and the site's own currency selector all feed in. Keep them consistent with the exit, or you collect a mixed page that no local visitor would see.
Country or city targeting?
National pricing — most airline fares, app stores, national retailers — only needs the country. City matters where the page is genuinely local: local rank tracking, hotel and rental prices, delivery fees and store stock.
| Plan | Country | City |
|---|---|---|
| ARC Basic, Fast, Ultra | 185+ countries | Published metro list in 12 countries, e.g. Munich, London, New York, Tokyo |
| ARC Mobile | Germany, UK, US, Japan | Not available |
Checking that targeting worked
Ask more than one geolocation service where the exit is, and compare the localised page against what you expect. City-level answers differ between databases more often than country-level ones. The test proxy location guide walks through it, and point of sale explains why the country matters so much for travel prices.
FAQ
Questions
Something not covered? Write to contact@arcproxies.io.
How accurate is proxy geo-targeting?
The exit is placed in the country or city you request, but every site judges location with its own geolocation data, and databases can disagree, especially at city level. Verify with more than one lookup and with the localised page itself.
Which cities can I target with ARC?
On ARC Basic, Fast and Ultra, cities from a published list across twelve countries, including Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, London, Manchester, Paris, Milan, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Sydney, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Warsaw. Country targeting covers 185+ countries.
Can I target a state or region rather than a city?
Not as a separate token on ARC. Targeting is by country, and by city from the published metro list. Pick the metro that represents the region you care about.
Does geo-targeting work with mobile proxies?
At country level. ARC Mobile exits in Germany, the UK, the US and Japan and has no city targeting.
Sources & review
Last reviewed by the ARC Proxies team. Prices are read from the live catalog at build time.
In practice