Desperate for help: My 'What is my City Name' tool keeps failing IP lookup, showing generic locations!

i just launched my "What is my City Name" web tool a few days ago, and it was working perfectly fine. users could instantly see their city based on their IP. but since yesterday, the tool has started to consistently fail at getting accurate city data. instead of specific cities, it's often returning "unknown" or just the country name. i'm seeing weird issues with the core IP address lookup functionality, and it's super frustrating.

here's a snippet from my logs when a request comes in, showing what's happening:

[ERROR] 2023-10-27 14:35:01: GeolocationService: Failed to retrieve city for IP 192.0.2.1. Response: {"status":"fail","message":"Invalid API Key or Rate Limit Exceeded"}
[WARNING] 2023-10-27 14:35:02: FallbackService: Using country-level data due to upstream failure.

i've double-checked my API key multiple times to ensure there are no typos, and i've restarted the server a few times, hoping it was just a temporary glitch. i even tried switching to a different IP lookup API provider, but i'm getting similar, vague results. checked my rate limits too, but it doesn't seem like i'm hitting them. i really need some expert eyes on this. i'm completly stuck and my users are starting to complain. any ideas why this is suddenly happening and how to fix it fast? thanks in advance for any help!