How do I get IP location (IP属地) data from Weibo posts and Bilibili comments?

A hotpot chain from Chengdu opens its first stores in Shanghai and posts a launch video on Bilibili. Marketing wants to know whether the excitement in the comments comes from Shanghai or from homesick Sichuan viewers elsewhere. Both platforms print an IP location on public content, and you can count it at scale.

Where the field lives

Platform	Endpoint	Field	Level
Bilibili	Bilibili video comments	ip_location on each comment	Per comment
Weibo	Weibo post search with view=full	ext.region on each post	Per post
Weibo	Weibo account profile with view=full	ext.ip_location	Per account

The values are the place names the platforms show, usually a province such as 上海 or 四川, or a country for overseas users. The "IP属地" and "发布于" prefixes are already stripped.

Cost

Job	Calls	Cost
1,000 Bilibili comments	50	$0.10
1,000 Weibo posts	100	$0.20
200 Weibo account profiles	200	$0.40

Counting provinces

import os, requests
from collections import Counter

API = "https://api.okdata.online"
H = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['OKDATA_API_KEY']}"}

def pages(path, n, **p):
    cursor = None
    for _ in range(n):
        r = requests.get(API + path, headers=H, timeout=30,
                         params={**p, **({"cursor": cursor} if cursor else {})}).json()
        if r["code"] != "ok":
            print(path, r["code"]); return
        yield from r["data"]["items"]
        if not r["page"]["has_more"]:
            return
        cursor = r["page"]["next_cursor"]

bili = Counter(c["ip_location"] for c in pages("/v1/bilibili/videos/comments/list", 25,
               id="BV1xx411c7mD", sort="latest", fields="ip_location"))
weibo = Counter(p["ext"].get("region") for p in pages("/v1/weibo/posts/search", 50,
                query="成都火锅 上海", view="full", fields="ext.region"))
print("Bilibili", bili.most_common(10))
print("Weibo", weibo.most_common(10))

Read it carefully

• It is where the IP address was, not where the person lives. Travel, VPNs and mobile roaming all move it.
• Old posts and comments from before the platforms began showing locations have none. Missing values come back null and the field is listed in meta.unavailable.
• Use it in aggregate. A province count across 1,000 comments is market research; tracking one person's location is not something to build.
• Weibo comments are not in the catalog, so on Weibo you get the location of posts and accounts, not of replies.

Other ways

For your own videos, Bilibili's creator centre shows audience regions, and Weibo's account analytics do the same for your followers. Those numbers cover viewers who never comment, so they are the better source for your own channel. For competitors' content, the public field above is what you can see. More ways to read public reaction are on word of mouth.