All visitors have the same IP address and Provider. How do I track individual IPs?

If you are seeing that all your visitors are correctly tracked in Matomo but that they all have the same IP address, read on. In your ‘Visitor Log’ report, if all your visitors have the same IP address or the same Provider, this FAQ will provide a solution.

Why do I see the same IP everywhere?

In most cases this IP address (that is set to all visitors) is either the IP of the Matomo server itself or maybe the IP of a proxy server or a firewall between your website’s visitors and the server hosting your website. Sometimes the IP address will be set as 0.0.0.0.

How do I fix this issue?

  1. Your Matomo server may actually be hosted behind a proxy. To configure Matomo to track IP address correctly when using a Proxy server, read this FAQ to configure Matomo to read the correct IP address. As explained in this FAQ you may add lines in your Matomo config file to tell Matomo where to read the IP address. If after upgrading to Matomo 5 you are now seeing visits with local IP addresses then you may need to set proxy_ip_read_last_in_list = 0 in your Matomo config.ini.php (learn more)
  2. Are you using the Tracking API? You may also experience this problem when you are using one of the Tracking API clients to record visits and actions. You may use the method setIP() to overwrite the IP address manually. See the reference.

What about is my visitors really have the same IP address, what should I do?

Sometimes people who view your website do actually have the same IP address. This is the case when:

  • users all belong to the same internal network, and are viewing your intranet website
  • users use a VPN and all appear as coming from the same IP address.

In that case we recommend to look at the FAQ How do I track people on my Intranet?.

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