How do visitor countries and states/provinces work?

A rule's Visitor countries decide where its visitors are from. Leave the list empty to match visitors from anywhere, or add countries to narrow the rule. Except countries leaves countries out. You can also pick states/provinces inside a country, but they are best effort.

Choosing countries

Under Who sees it, press Add countries. The list is grouped by continent, with the EU, EEA and GCC as groups of their own, and you can search by country, region, state/province or code. Your choice is shown as a short list under the field.

• Empty Visitor countries — the rule matches visitors from anywhere. When nothing else narrows the rule either, the page warns you that it matches everyone.
• Except countries — visitors from these never get this rule. With no visitor countries set, the rule matches everywhere else.
• A country in both lists — not allowed. The page shows the overlap and Save stays off until you remove it.

States/provinces

Expand a country in the list to pick its states/provinces. Picking a state/province also adds its country. Within a country you picked states/provinces for, only those match; a country with none picked still matches everywhere in it. So "all of Europe, and in France only Île-de-France" means exactly that.

In Except countries, you can leave out one state/province without leaving out its country: "everywhere except Texas" is Texas in the except list, with the United States itself not in it.

The second sentence matters most. A visitor whose state/province SignalLane cannot read is treated as if they might be in the one you excluded, so the rule stays off for their whole country. Redirecting someone who may be in the excluded state/province is the mistake an exclusion exists to prevent.

How SignalLane finds the visitor's location

SignalLane asks Shopify where the visitor is. When Shopify cannot say, SignalLane can usually still tell the country, but never the state/province. Only Shopify's own answer can include a state/province, and Shopify does not guarantee one for any country. SignalLane does not store the visitor's location: it is remembered only for that browser visit, so the lookup is not repeated on every page.

When the country cannot be found

Rules that name countries, in either list, do not run for that visitor. Rules with no country condition still run, so a rule built only on a referring site or a page keeps working.

Check a state/province rule

Open your storefront with ?signallane_preview=1 and look at the browser console. The line ends with your placement, such as placed USCA for California. When SignalLane knows only your country it shows just that, such as placed US, and a rule naming a state/province will not run for you. When it could not place you at all, there is no placement. How the preview works.

Countries also decide who sees a cart or checkout suggestion, and who is refused at checkout. Block checkout refuses by shipping country only, never by state/province, and only once you turn SignalLane on in Settings › Checkout › Checkout rules; SignalLane cannot see whether you have. Block checkout by country.