Counting IP addresses in PHP with MySQL

I want to count unique visits to a php file. I currently have following code. Could you expain why it doesnt work?

$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$geo_url = "http://ift.tt/1esFEZI".$ip."";

$data = file_get_contents($geo_url);
$visitor_location = json_decode($data, true);

$visitorcount = mycustomdb()->query("SELECT ipa FROM visits WHERE ipa = '".$visitor_location['ip']."' LIMIT 1");

if(!empty($visitorcount) {

$filedlupdate = mycustomdb()->query("SOME QUERRY THAT SETS uniquevisits=uniquevisits+1");
$visit = mycustomdb()->query("INSERT INTO visits (ipa) VALUES ('".$ip."')");

}

Basically the idea is to check if the IP is unique. If it is unique then uniquevisits gets a +1 and the ip is added to "ipa". If the ip is present in ipa, then the next check is ignored and nothing is being done. filedlupdate exists and works standalone, but not combined with all the code. Im not sure if I wrote it correctly. Can you spot an error?

via Chebli Mohamed