Google Analytics and visitors geo location

There was a chart regarding web site visitors used in the AdCanada marketing presentation that caught my attention. It was used to demonstrate that our member newspaper web sites aren’t reaching local visitors.  This graphic jumped out at me as, coincidentally,  I had just been reading about those numbers. It wasn’t an integral part of their presentation, and I don’t mean to disagree with any conclusion drawn, except to say it needn’t be read quite so negatively.
Google Analytics -> Audience -> Geo -> Location chart,   with “CITY” set as your primary dimension
Here’s a little more information about those particular stats — something that perhaps can be used if a local advertiser were to ask to see these numbers, and come to the same conclusion.
Google Analytics uses your visitor’s IP address to estimate location, and does that by referencing third-party databases maintained by internet service providers (ISP). The accuracy of those estimates varies from company to company and can depend on how big they are, how they assign their addresses, how often they add more addresses to the pool, etc.
The accepted estimates generally seem to be reported as:

Country level = 95-99% accurate
Region/Province level = 55-80% accurate
Cities – 50-75% accurate

When I look up my own IP address I am hardly ever found in Melville, SK or even in nearby Yorkton, but almost always in Saskatoon (350 kilometres away)  or Regina (150 kilometres away). I’ve even seen some pretty random looking small towns.  Punnichy?  Really Google? You found Punnichy? (pop. 245, and over an hour’s drive away)
So when I am explaining this Geo locations chart, I describe the results “this isn’t where these people are exactly, this is where their internet company thinks they might be, and for rural areas it is often just ’rounded up’ to where the internet company itself is.” While simplified, it offers a explanation your local advertisers can visualize, can relate to — head offices, big city competitors.

Interestingly, Google Ads and Google Analytics don’t use the same methods for locating site visitors.  The privacy policies allow ad targeting to use more data, more tools to determine visitor’s location.

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https://www.jmillermarketing.com/insights/2018/errors-in-google-analytics-user-location-data
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2453994?hl=en&co=ADWORDS.IsAWNCustomer%3Dfalse