Google Analytics gets country wrong for visitors coming through redirectors (tinyurl, ask.fm). Meta refresh doesn't help

Question

I get visitors on my website from redirections, for instance tinyurl.com or ask.fm (Ask.fm does a redirection automatically when people share a link).

In Google Analytics, all these visitors are displayed like if they were coming from India (city: Faridabad): I suppose that ask.fm servers are based there and in Estonia. I know though that most of my visitors are in France and other European countries.

I tried to go through a second redirection using an auto-refresh on a personal website, to "clean" the visitor's data from any reference to India, but it didn't worked (it only worked for one in 5 maybe). Same for 2 redirections in a row.

Do you have any idea how I could correct my data to display the right visitor's country?

---

PS: I'd like to add some important details about the redirection I've tried. The redirect I've tried looks like this: tinyrul/ask.fm -> one of my website with META REFRESH -> my website page where I want the visitor to arrive

I think that one of the key clues here is the fact that I am using a basic META Refresh, and it is not enough to "clean up" the ask/tinyurl server information. But what else could/should I use, that is where I'm stuck at.

PS2: I tried a 301 redirection. Didn't work neither... I'm really getting short on ideas. tinyurl/ask.fm => personal website with 301 redirects to => personal website where I want the visitors to arrive

Answer 1

That does not make sense. If ask.fm generates a 301 (I know tinyurl.com does) then the user is redirected. This means ask.fm and tinyurl.com reply to the browser with a header like this:

Location: http://go.here.instead.please.com/

And the client's browser will then make the request to your server directly. So you will get the client's IP and the tinyurl.com ans ask.fm servers are 100% transparent to your server or even GoogleAnalytics that you installed in your pages.

The only way to get the wrong info would be if people accessing your site make use of an HTTP proxy such as "hide your ass" (it was free before, now there is a fee so I won't put a link but you can find it with Google, of course.)

You should remove your own 301 because they are definitely useless. If there is a proxy, somehow, then your 301s are just an extra waste of time.

Answer 2

I have the beginning of an answer: when users come through their mobile phone, then the "ask.fm" is identified as a referral, and the user is correctly geolocated in France (for instance) rather than India or US.