# Geolocation

**Learn about the geolocation techniques to determine where requests are coming from, and a bit about how to avoid being blocked based on geolocation.**

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Geolocation is yet another way websites can detect and block access or show limited data. Other than by using the https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Geolocation_API (which requires user permission in order to receive location data), there are two main ways that websites geolocate a user (or bot) visiting it.

## Cookies & headers

Certain websites might use certain location-specific/language-specific https://pr-2157.preview.docs.apify.com/academy/concepts/http-headers.md/https://pr-2157.preview.docs.apify.com/academy/concepts/http-cookies.md to geolocate a user. Some examples of these headers are `Accept-Language` and `CloudFront-Viewer-Country` (which is a custom HTTP header from https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/adding-cloudfront-headers.html).

On targets which are utilizing just cookies and headers to identify the location from which a request is coming from, it is pretty straightforward to make requests which appear like they are coming from somewhere else.

## IP address

The oldest (and still most common) way of geolocating is based on the IP address used to make the request. Sometimes, country-specific sites block themselves from being accessed from any other country (some Chinese, Indian, Israeli, and Japanese websites do this).

https://pr-2157.preview.docs.apify.com/academy/anti-scraping/mitigation/proxies.md can be used in a scraper to bypass restrictions and to make requests from a different location. Oftentimes, proxies need to be used in combination with location-specific https://pr-2157.preview.docs.apify.com/academy/concepts/http-cookies.md/https://pr-2157.preview.docs.apify.com/academy/concepts/http-headers.md.

## Override/emulate geolocation when using a browser-based scraper

When using https://pptr.dev/#?product=Puppeteer&show=api-pagesetgeolocationoptions, you can emulate the geolocation with the `page.setGeolocation()` function.

In https://playwright.dev/docs/api/class-browsercontext#browsercontextsetgeolocationgeolocation, geolocation can be emulated by using `browserContext.setGeolocation()`.

Overriding browser geolocation should be used in tandem with a proper proxy corresponding to the emulated geolocation. You would still likely get blocked if you, for example, used a German proxy with the overridden location set to Japan.
