When you create geolocation records, you specify the following values.

Routing policy

ChooseGeolocation.

Record name

Enter the name of the domain or subdomain that you want to route traffic for. The default value is the name of the hosted zone.

Enter the same name for all of the records in the group of geolocation records.

For more information about record names, seeRecord name.

Record type

The DNS record type. For more information, seeSupported DNS record types.

Select the same value for all of the records in the group of geolocation records.

TTL (seconds)

The amount of time, in seconds, that you want DNS recursive resolvers to cache information about this record. If you specify a longer value (for example, 172800 seconds, or two days), you reduce the number of calls that DNS recursive resolvers must make to Route 53 to get the latest information in this record. This has the effect of reducing latency and reducing your bill for Route 53 service. For more information, seeHow Amazon Route 53 routes traffic for your domain.

However, if you specify a longer value for TTL, it takes longer for changes to the record (for example, a new IP address) to take effect because recursive resolvers use the values in their cache for longer periods before they ask Route 53 for the latest information. If you're changing settings for a domain or subdomain that's already in use, we recommend that you initially specify a shorter value, such as 300 seconds, and increase the value after you confirm that the new settings are correct.

If you're associating this record with a health check, we recommend that you specify a TTL of 60 seconds or less so clients respond quickly to changes in health status.

Value/Route traffic to

ChooseIP address or another value depending on the record type. Enter a value that is appropriate for the value ofRecord type. For all types exceptCNAME, you can enter more than one value. Enter each value on a separate line.

You can route traffic to, or specify the following values:

For more information about the above values, seecommon values for Value/Route traffic to.

Location

When you configure Route 53 to respond to DNS queries based on the location that the queries originated from, select the continent or country for which you want Route 53 to respond with the settings in this record. If you want Route 53 to respond to DNS queries for individual states in the United States, selectUnited States from theLocation list, and then select the state under theSublocation group.

For a private hosted zone, select the continent, country, or sub-division closest to the AWS Region that your resource is in. For example, if your resource is in us-east-1, you can specify North America, United States, or Virginia.

You can't create non-geolocation records that have the same values forRecord name andRecord type as geolocation records.

For more information, seeGeolocation routing.

Here are the countries that Amazon Route 53 associates with each continent. The country codes are from ISO 3166. For more information, see the Wikipedia articleISO 3166-1 alpha-2:

U.S. states

When you configure Route 53 to respond to DNS queries based on the state of the United States that the queries originated from, select the state from theU.S. states list. United States territories (for example, Puerto Rico) are listed as countries in theLocation list.

Health check

Select a health check if you want Route 53 to check the health of a specified endpoint and to respond to DNS queries using this record only when the endpoint is healthy.

Route 53 doesn't check the health of the endpoint specified in the record, for example, the endpoint specified by the IP address in theValue field. When you select a health check for a record, Route 53 checks the health of the endpoint that you specified in the health check. For information about how Route 53 determines whether an endpoint is healthy, seeHow Amazon Route 53 determineswhether a health check is healthy.

Associating a health check with a record is useful only when Route 53 is choosing between two or more records to respond to a DNS query, and you want Route 53 to base the choice in part on the status of a health check. Use health checks only in the following configurations:

If your health checks specify the endpoint only by domain name, we recommend that you create a separate health check for each endpoint. For example, create a health check for each HTTP server that is serving content for www.example.com. For the value ofDomain Name, specify the domain name of the server (such as us-east-2-www.example.com), not the name of the records (example.com).

For geolocation records, if an endpoint is unhealthy, Route 53 looks for a record for the larger, associated geographic Region. For example, suppose you have records for a state in the United States, for the United States, for North America, and for all locations (Location isDefault). If the endpoint for the state record is unhealthy, Route 53 checks the records for the United States, for North America, and for all locations, in that order, until it finds a record that has a healthy endpoint. If all applicable records are unhealthy, including the record for all locations, Route 53 responds to the DNS query using the value for the record for the smallest geographic region.

Record ID

Enter a value that uniquely identifies this record in the group of geolocation records.

Thanks for letting us know we're doing a good job!

If you've got a moment, please tell us what we did right so we can do more of it.

Thanks for letting us know this page needs work. We're sorry we let you down.

If you've got a moment, please tell us how we can make the documentation better.