
Show HN: GeoScreenshot – Test your website from many locations - kpsychwave
http://www.geoscreenshot.com/locations?utm_source=hn&utm_medium=hn&utm_campaign=hn
======
preinheimer
If you need to actually navigate your website from different locations we can
give you a hand: [https://wonderproxy.com/](https://wonderproxy.com/) we have
proxy servers in >200 locations around the world.

Our more basic screenshot tool is up at
[http://shotsherpa.com](http://shotsherpa.com)

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josh_carterPDX
We use Hotjar recordings to see what people see from various regions. It's
pretty useful in that we can see how the page loads for users outside of the
US. But beyond that, we can see what they interact with on the page.

This seems useful from a very high level, but if someone wants more data
points I'm sure they would use something more robust.

~~~
kpsychwave
As of right now, we provide uptime and visual testing. If you have advanced
functionality that varies by region, something like IP spoofing might work
best for your needs.

But for most companies use GeoIP targeting for things like:

Currency and Dynamic Pricing Locale (date time formats, languages), Dynamic
translation functionality Determining visitor origins Custom ads/messaging
Redirection to local websites (Amazon, Google, Craigslist use this) IP-based
blocking (for cyber attack protection)

I would think that something like Hotjar is more useful for studying user
behavior (how it varies across regions) than testing website functionality.

I will have to to more digging to see if they do the actual recordings from
servers in those particular regions, or if they just map geo-filtered data
over a standard video recording (with the assumption that it renders the same
everywhere)

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cmillard
This looks similar to:

[https://geopeeker.com/](https://geopeeker.com/)

I did a quick price/feature comparison and it appears to be a toss-up
depending on what you need. Any thoughts on how you plan to distinguish
yourself from this other service? Selecting your location is definitely a cool
idea- good work!

~~~
kpsychwave
We have more locations, a simpler product and more options for the advanced
plan.

GeoScreenshot has a simpler and more intuitive UI so you can go back/forth
between new captures and your history without having to reload pages.

Our pricing model is also simpler, we give you more locations and options for
the plus plan. The free account with all the "plus" options enabled, so you
know what you are paying for.

At the time of this writing, we offer 7 free locations and > 60 plus
locations. For our advanced plan, you can select from > 420 cities from nearly
every country in the world. We will set up a dedicated worker in that region.

Some examples of advanced locations:

[https://www.geoscreenshot.com/country/united-
states](https://www.geoscreenshot.com/country/united-states)
[https://www.geoscreenshot.com/country/saudi-
arabia](https://www.geoscreenshot.com/country/saudi-arabia)
[https://www.geoscreenshot.com/country/china](https://www.geoscreenshot.com/country/china)

\---

I would also like to add:

The main advantage of using GeoScreenshot over buying a proxy list or a VPN is
convenience and efficiency. To minimize the headaches and man hours spent on
website testing.

There are significant man hour costs and technical barriers with using
VPNs/proxies, changing view ports, clearing cache, shifting browsers, system
settings, locale settings, time zones.

~~~
cmillard
Thanks for your response- I'll definitely keep this service in mind in the
future!

------
andrewl
I like what you're offering, but I just get an "Encountered Problem" error in
the latest version of Chrome on Windows 10. And I was testing a very minimal
site with just the London location, so load should have been low. Load from my
one test, that is. You may be getting a lot of other traffic.

If it can be made to work reliably, I could see my company paying for it.

~~~
kpsychwave
Hi Andrew,

There was a spike about 2 hours ago and the app exceeded an hourly quota. It
should good to go now.

Please contact me at contact@geoscreenshot.com with your needs, I offer custom
solutions for companies.

------
kpsychwave
If you got the "Encountered Problem" error, there was an unexpected spike and
traffic a few hours ago, and the API was blocking requests. The server is back
up now.

I would really appreciate it if you could send me any bugs, screenshots,
suggestions to contact@geoscreenshot.com

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dbg31415
Cool idea.

Your marketing site's pricing page breaks on mobile.

Also seems like you could automate this and run the check every 5 minutes, and
then compare the screenshots to see if any of them are different, then alert
the users.

~~~
zeta0134
That sounds like a good idea on paper, but I think rotating or animating
content (especially advertising banners) would heavily complicate that
strategy.

~~~
kpsychwave
There are also pop ups (like the EU cookie warning), self-triggering modals,
A/B testing experiences, and newer patterns like feedback widgets that give
false positives.

I am working on a visual diff engine that will account for all of these, you
can sign up for updates here:

[http://geodiff.launchrock.com/](http://geodiff.launchrock.com/)

------
brudgers
Homepage:
[https://www.geoscreenshot.com/capture](https://www.geoscreenshot.com/capture)

------
bhartzer
Looks like it still is encountering problems, I get a 403 error from London an
ny. Might be cloudflare blocking it?

~~~
kpsychwave
Thanks for that. I caught a 403 in the logs for PriceHipster, logs confirmed
that CloudFlare (nginx/cloudflare) blocked it.

If it is yours, thanks for reporting it, I have pushed the fix down the
pipeline. Its not giving a 403 anymore, but still doesn't render properly.

I have tried to debug it with a different engine but it looks like the site
has JS based browser detection (not based on user agent strings). Since its a
headless browser, some JS functionality is unavailable, and super dynamic
sites break. Another limitation I am working around.

------
kpsychwave
Just added London, Singapore and Amsterdam to the free offering. Please post
any questions/feature requests here.

~~~
blakesterz
I'm guessing it's either my Privacy Badger or uBlock Origin, but the site's
broken for me on Chrome 52 Ubuntu.

~~~
corobo
"The site's broken" on Hacker News, really? Put some effort into reporting the
problem!

~~~
gavinpc
If "Privacy Badger" blocks cookies, then it's probably the old "The operation
is insecure." That's what I see. A message says "Please select up to three
locations," but there is no list of locations.

People, please _use a try /catch when feature testing for localStorage_. If
cookies are blocked for the domain, trying to access storage will throw a
security exception. This exception will almost definitely hose whatever
behavior you were trying to add. I see this on probably 60% of Show HN
projects, but sometimes even on large sites.

Your core competency is testing web sites, right? I'd suggest making one of
those 200 locations block cookies. You'll find 10x as many defects.

( _edit_ And I'm assuming that localStorage is almost never really necessary
for these sites, but that some bit of the framework tests for it without the
developer even realizing it. So yes, I consider that a defect.)

~~~
gavinpc
...for example, the first Show HN on the front page right now. Doesn't work at
all when cookies are blocked—it just renders some stars and some chrome.

But okay, I'll run it in another browser. Wow, it's a really cool WebGL
visualization of global temperatures. And what is it using localStorage for?
It sets one key called `runOnce` to `true`. I think that could be considered
optional. Easy to fix, if they knew about it.

~~~
callumprentice
I'm looking to see if I can fix this now but I don't want to make risky
changes while a few people are watching. Will look into it though - Cheers.!

~~~
stevekemp
If you're too scared to make changes to your application, that's a great
reason to start making sure you have test-cases, and a test-suite.

My toy side-project has a full regression test which is executed before any
(automated) deploy/upgrade, for precisely this reason.

------
jdsampayo
Tried but always got "Encountered Problem"

------
batrat
Not working on chrome & win 10

~~~
kpsychwave
I am using it on Win 10 and Chrome, and it looks fine. Could you describe what
is not working?

