How to Test a Website From Any Country or Location

How Can You Perform Geolocation Browser Testing?

With TestMu AI, you can perform cross browser testing across 3,000+ browser and OS combinations from different geolocations.

Geolocation testing works for both manual cross browser testing and automated testing using an online Selenium Grid. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see how to perform cross-browser testing from various geo locations.

By default, TestMu AI uses IP2Location to determine your geolocation and routes you to the nearest data center for the best performance.

For geolocation-sensitive testing, you can bypass that routing: the TestMu AI machine is proxied through the location you set, so testing behaves as if you are in that country.

What Is IP2Location?

IP2Location is a service that lets you identify the IP address responsible for your internet access. It can surface details about that IP address such as the time zone, net speed, and area code.

Testing Geolocation From the TestMu AI Dashboard

Geolocation is built into TestMu AI real-time testing, so you can switch countries from inside a live session in a few clicks:

• Launch a live session. Start a real-time session for the URL you want to check on any browser and OS.
• Open the settings panel. Click the Settings icon under the controller buttons on the left toolbar.
• Choose a country. Pick the geolocation you want to test from, and the session reloads through an IP in that region.
• Verify the experience. Check that the language, currency, content, and any geo-blocked media match what a local user would see.

Here is that flow in action. With IP Geolocation set to India, Amazon loads its India experience inside the live session, showing a Deliver to India address and prompting a switch to the local amazon.in store:

For the full walkthrough, see the docs on desktop browser real-time testing.

Leveraging Geolocation Feature For Online Selenium Grid

If you wish to incorporate Geolocation testing under your Selenium automation testing scripts then you can do so with the help of the TestMu AI Selenium Desired Capabilities Generator. You will find a drop-down to select a country at which you wish to perform automated geolocation browser testing.

Once you select a country from the drop-down, you will find our Capabilities Generator automatically adding a capability for geolocation in the Capabilities class on the right side.

What Can You Test By Incorporating Geolocation Browser Testing?

Now that you can load your site from any country, here is what to actually check.

Geotargeting To Evaluate SERP(Search Engine Result Pages)

Search engines tailor results by region, so the same query can return a noticeably different results page from one country to the next. Here it is in practice:

1. When searched through an IP from France.

2. When searched through an IP from United Kingdom.

You can notice the differences through the area highlighted.

Geofencing To Drive Personalized Notifications

Geofencing sends notifications to your users based on the geographic area they are in while using your web application. For example, if you want to push an exclusive notification for an upcoming regional festival, you can test how it appears from an IP belonging to that country.

Src: Eventya

Geotagging For Identifying Geospatial Metadata

Geotagging attaches a geographical tag to elements such as photos, videos, and QR codes. You can use it to add geography-based authentication through QR codes, or to serve images that should only be accessible to people in a particular location.

Src: PaintShop Pro

Geo-blocking To Display Content According To Country Laws

Geo-blocking applies restrictions to your website based on the laws and norms of a country.

Many online streaming companies such as Hulu, Netflix, HBO Max, and more use geo-blocking to deliver rich-media content according to each country's norms. You may have seen the image below when a video would not play on YouTube.

That message is geo-blocking in action. If you run a website, make sure the photos and videos you display comply with the norms of the countries your audience lives in.

Localization For Adapting To Specific Locale

Localization means making your web application look and feel native to the specific locale a visitor is accessing it from.

So if you run a business that caters to multiple countries, you may want your pricing page to show prices in the country-specific currency, or even serve a fully translated page in your customers' native language.

You can use geolocation browser testing to evaluate how well your website is able to localize.

Test Your Website For Different Internet Bandwidth

Network speed varies widely by country, so a page that feels fast in one region can crawl in another. Pair geolocation testing with testing on different network conditions to see how your site loads over 3G or 4G where your users actually are.

TestMu AI's LT Browser lets you preview and debug your mobile website across device viewports, with network throttling built in, so you can check load behavior before running location-specific tests.