What is a geolocation pass rate?

A pass rate is the share of location checks that return a usable result, and on its own it says nothing about whether those results were correct.

What it measures

When a vendor or operator reports a pass rate, it usually means the share of attempts that ended in a definite answer the business could act on, as opposed to an error, a timeout, a prompt the user abandoned, or an inconclusive result.

That is a useful number. It tracks friction: how often a genuine customer gets stuck. Operators care about it because every failed check is a customer who might leave.

What it does not measure

A pass rate does not say whether the answers were right. A system that returned “inside” for every request would have a perfect pass rate. A stricter system that refuses when evidence is weak will have a lower one.

To know whether results are correct you need ground truth: a set of checks where the true location is known independently, including attempts made by people deliberately trying to get around the check. Almost none of it is published. No location vendor’s accuracy is externally audited today, Octet’s included.

Reading a pass rate well

• Ask what counts as a pass. Does an inconclusive result count as a failure, or is it excluded?
• Ask whether the denominator includes users who gave up before the check ran.
• Ask how false passes are found, and how many were found.
• Compare pass rates only between systems that define them the same way.

Octet reports INDETERMINATE as its own verdict rather than folding it into a pass or a fail, so the rate of each can be read separately.

Last reviewed 19 October 2026