A country or region code is a standardized abbreviation used to identify a specific country or region. Region codes are used in various contexts. They can be used for telecommunications, currency codes, and internet domain registration. E-commerce businesses also need region codes for international shipping. Moreover, businesses can leverage the region codes of their website visitors to optimize marketing strategy and targeted campaigns.
But how do businesses determine the region codes of their website visitors? Fortunately, an IP geolocation API service can help find accurate region codes of website visitors. Basically, an IP contains unique information about the owner’s location, down to their region in the country. An IP geolocation API can retrieve this information accurately.
Read on to find out what a region code is and how you can make use of it for your business.
Table of Contents
What is a Region Code?
A region code is an international standard denomination for country subdivisions established by the ISO-3166-2 code. Essentially, ISO-3166 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It defines all codes internationally accepted for the names of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographical interest, and their subdivisions.
ISO 3166 standard
The ISO 3166 standard essentially includes three parts:
- ISO 3166-1: Contains multiple categories for defining codes for the names of the countries, such as two-letter country codes, three-letter country codes, and three-digit country codes. ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 (two-letter country codes) is the most widely used standard by most countries. Here are some examples of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 (two-letter country codes):
- United States: US
- Canada: CA
- United Kingdom: GB
- ISO 3166-2: Defines codes for country subdivisions, such as regions, provinces, and states. For example, the region code for California is CA.
- ISO 3166-3: These are country codes that are no longer in use, either because the country has stopped existing or because the code was modified for major reasons.
The ISO-3166 standard is updated and maintained by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency. It is reviewed and voted on by several national standard organizations, some United Nations agencies, and international organizations. When necessary, if international or national borders and units change, the ISO-3166 standard may get updates, always published by the official source.
Sometimes, these codes are confused with DVD region codes. However, these two are different things.
Region codes are usually derived from coding systems already in place in the country that have become accepted internationally but can sometimes be developed by the agency itself.
A complete ISO-3166-2 code consists of the code of the country in alpha-2 format and the region code, which consists of up to three alphanumeric characters, each combination is unique to refer to one place. This can be a region, province, parish, or any kind of subdivision, usually as part of a country.
Why are Region Codes Useful?
Region codes can be helpful in various contexts. Here, we’ll discuss how region codes can be helpful to businesses.
Knowing the region code of the website visitors can be handy in many ways. For example, businesses can optimize their marketing strategy. By knowing who sees your website and is interested in your business, depending on the characteristics of your client profile, you can choose market niches and implement your business strategy.
Similarly, by knowing the region code of an IP, you can assess whether you’re getting a large influx of visitors from an area that is not your target or could even pose a threat.
As such, both your security online and your business strategy can greatly benefit from knowing your visitors’ region code.
How to Get Region Code Using an API?
You can use an IP geolocation API to get geolocation data associated with an IP address. Depending on the API, the geolocation information typically includes country, city, continent, region, latitude, and longitude. However, it’s essential to choose a reliable API to benefit from accurate IP geolocation data.
Ipstack is one such API. ipstack is a leading IP geolocation API that provides highly accurate and precise geolocation data associated with an IP address. It provides global coverage (over 2 million unique locations in 200,000+ cities worldwide). These include:
- South America
- Central America
- Eastern Europe
- East Asia
- Middle East
- South Korea
- Pacific Islands
- Latin America
Additionally, it supports both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
Ipstack provides detailed geolocation data, which includes:
- Continent name and code
- Country name and code
- Particular region name and code
- City name
- Zip code
- Latitude and longitude coordinates
Additionally, ipstack offers Timezone, Currency, Connection, and Security modules offering valuable information. You can check out ipstack’s documentation to get more details about the API’s functionality and capabilities.
How to find the region code in the ipstack API response?
When you make a call to the ipstack API to find out an IP’s full information, you will get a list of objects for the given IP. The region code is one of the data fields provided in a standard response, along with the region name.
Here is an example response provided by the ipstack API:
How to request only the region code in your API call?
The ipstack API’s ‘field’ parameter can be used to request an API response with just one specific object. You can find specific instructions on how to specify response fields in the API documentation.
How can businesses use ipstack to their advantage?
Businesses can get millions of website visitors in a day, and looking up the IP region code manually for all of them can be a time-consuming task.
By using a geolocation API service like ipstack, you can get this information in seconds. With an extremely scalable solution and a top-notch security guarantee, ipstack is the leader in IP database services.
With ipstack, you can implement location restrictions to your website, find out valuable data about your customers, like their time zone and currency, and take your marketing strategy to the next level, delivering the best customer experience.
Conclusion
Country and region codes are international standard denominations for countries and their subdivisions. These codes are defined under the ISO-3166 standard established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Region codes can be helpful in various cases. For example, businesses can determine the region codes of their website visitors using an IP geolocation API. They can use this information to optimize their marketing strategy and targeted campaigns.
Looking to find region codes and IP geolocation data of your website visitors? Try ipstack IP geolocation API today!
FAQs
How to get the region code?
You can search for region codes of specific countries on Google. If you’re looking to find the region code of your website visitors, you can use a reliable IP geolocation API like ipstack.
What does country or region code mean?
A country or region code is defined under the ISO-3166 standard established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). These codes are used internationally for various purposes, such as currency codes and internet domain registration.
Why use region codes?
Businesses can use region codes to optimize their marketing strategy based on users located in a specific region. This results in more effective marketing campaigns.
