How Does CANDDi’s Reverse IP Lookup Work?

What is an IP address?

In simple terms, an IP (Internet Protocol) address is a number assigned to your device when it connects to the internet. It looks something like this:

192.158.1.38

This number then acts as an identifier for a device when it exchanges information with the internet.

How we match an IP address to a company

From the second your tracking code goes live, CANDDi will automatically examine the IP address of every device that visits your website.

Next, CANDDi takes that IP address and checks it against our database of nearly a hundred million companies worldwide. If we can match a device’s IP address to the most recently registered IP address of a company, we’ll identify the visitor as being from that company.

When a successful IP-address-to-company match is achieved, we’ll then also attach up-to-date information about that company such as industry, location, address, etc.

Note that this extra information about the company comes from a wide range of sources, but not directly from the IP address itself.

Is the reverse IP lookup 100% accurate?

The reverse IP lookup is a wonderfully useful technology, but it is definitely not always 100% accurate.

Concerns about accuracy usually fall into one of two camps:

• CANDDi identified a visitor as being from XYZ company, but I think this is wrong
• CANDDi identified a visitor which my other IP lookup tool did not (or vice versa)

So let’s deal with these separately.

Why might a Reverse IP Lookup identify a visitor as the wrong company?

CANDDi is constantly updating its database automatically, but due to companies relocating and/or changing their internet provider, occasionally the company name we attribute to a visit may no longer be correct.

There are other potential technical limitations that can lead to an incorrect match - the use of proxies, for example - but thankfully all instances of wrong company matches are rare.

Why do results differ between Reverse IP Lookup tools?

Every Reverse IP Lookup tool uses a different company database, and updates these databases using different sources and means.

As such, you’ll sometimes get one tool identifying a visitor that another tool was unable to successfully match to a company.

At CANDDi, we’re very confident in our Reverse IP Lookup match rates… so much so that we’ll happily test them head-to-head with any major competitor on the market!