Understanding IP Matching Limitations in Website Visitor Identification
At Sopro, we are dedicated to delivering an industry-leading multichannel engagement service designed to maximize your interactions with potential customers. A key component of this service is our advanced IP matching technology, which identifies the companies visiting your website and provides essential insights for targeted outreach.
However, we also want to be transparent about the realities of IP to business matching: due to various technical and structural factors, IP-based visitor identification is not 100% accurate.
Why IP Matching Has Limitations
IP matching is the industry standard for identifying businesses visiting a website. It works by cross-referencing a visitor’s IP address with a database of known company IP ranges. However, even the best IP intelligence providers in the world (e.g., ZoomInfo, Clearbit, Leadfeeder, Demandbase, 6sense) face challenges that affect accuracy, including:
- Shared & Dynamic IPs – Many businesses use shared internet connections, cloud services, or dynamic IPs that rotate frequently, making it difficult to assign a visit to a single company.
- Remote Work & VPN Usage – With hybrid and remote work more common than ever, many employees access websites from home, co-working spaces, or via VPNs, which can obscure their company’s true IP address.
- ISP Masking & Mobile Networks – Some corporate networks route traffic through ISPs that mask company identities, while visitors browsing from mobile devices or hotspots don’t inherit their company’s network IP.
- Multiple Businesses on One IP – Large office buildings, shared coworking spaces (e.g., WeWork, Regus), and serviced offices often use a single public IP for multiple businesses, making precise company identification difficult.
Industry-Wide Expectations & Accuracy
While no provider in the industry can achieve 100% match rate, the leading tools typically expect 25-40% in visitor identification depending on traffic type, location, and business sector.
At Sopro, we leverage advanced matching techniques using Clearbit as our trusted IP-to-company lookup source and maintaining a continuously updated IP database for optimal accuracy. In addition, our custom-built bot detection layer is continuously enhanced to filter out irrelevant bot traffic. Nonetheless, due to the inherent technical realities of IP tracking, occasional inconsistencies remain an industry-wide norm rather than a shortcoming of any specific platform.
What This Means for You
- Some visitors may not be identified due to remote work, VPNs, or ISP masking.
- Some identifications may be incorrect, particularly when multiple businesses share an IP.
- No tool can guarantee full visibility, but our system is optimized to provide the best possible match rates using current data.
We are constantly refining our IP database and integrating alternative signals (such as behavioral tracking and intent data) to improve accuracy.
If you have any concerns about specific cases, we’d be happy to review and provide recommendations on how to interpret the data for the best outreach strategy.
Why does Sopro have more visits registered than Google Analytics (GA) or other tracking platforms?
At Sopro, we work constantly on bot detection to filter out non-human traffic, but differences in tracking methods can lead to higher visit counts compared to Google Analytics (GA) or other tracking platforms:
Here’s why:
- Bot Traffic Detection & Filtering – We continuously refine our bot filtering, but some automated visits may still be recorded, whereas GA or other tools may track bots in different ways
- Server-Side vs. Browser Tracking – GA relies on browser scripts, which can be blocked by ad blockers, while Sopro.io tracks visits server-side, capturing more data.