# forum visitor map



## mkellogg

Hi everybody,

It has been over a year since I last posted a map showing where everybody is from.  Here are the latest versions. 

Mike

Top 25 cities:






Top 100 cities:





Top 500 cities!


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## Paulfromitaly

Interesting..there seems to be no one from Iceland..


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## cuchuflete

Right you are Paul.  And there is not even a tiny speck of orange in Maine, where I know there are at least three foreros.


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## french4beth

I am still in awe of the fact that people from all around the planet can simultaneously communicate with each other!

And Word Reference is awesome, too - don't know what I'd do without it!


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## TrentinaNE

Thanks for the update, Mike.  

In the top 25 map, it looks like the oversized dot in Spain represents Madrid. Can you tell us what the smaller dot (but still larger than all the other dots) immediately to the east is? And what do the relative sizes represent? The Madrid dot looks orders-of-magnitude larger than anything else!

Grazie,
Elisabetta


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## ILT

Well, I'm glad to see that my country has some cities represented in the map, but that sad that mine is not!  Well, I guess I'll have to find a way to log in simultaneously from a hundred computers 

Thanks for the update Mike!

P.S. The "big fat orange" (as someone called it) is Madrid, where our very own Be left several thousand people with instructions to log in every morning


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## GenJen54

Somehow my downright pleasant place has managed to fall off the map since the last time it was posted a year ago.  Shows how these forums have grown.


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## cuchuflete

TrentinaNE said:


> Thanks for the update, Mike.
> 
> In the top 25 map, it looks like the oversized dot in Spain represents Madrid. Can you tell us what the smaller dot (but still larger than all the other dots) immediately to the east is? And what do the relative sizes represent? The Madrid dot looks orders-of-magnitude larger than anything else!
> 
> Grazie,
> Elisabetta



If you mean the one to the northeast, that is Barcelona.  The Catalan forum is attracting a nice crowd.


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## Bienvenidos

Absolutely amazing! My geography skills aren't good enough to be able to name all of the cities,  but for fun I'll try...let's see...nevermind; I give up. 

Great to see the forums grow! 
What a great place, and as someone else mentioned earlier, I still have no idea how people on different sides of the planet can all meet in one place. It's mind-blowing.


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## 94kittycat

Cool, thanks for that, Mike!

I found it interesting that RocketGirl and I are the only ones in Alberta, Canada!


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## .   1

Great to see.
Thanks Mike.

Robert


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## fsabroso

Wow, I see Lima, Perú, in the top 25 cities map, I swear my relatives are not using  WRF to chat with me.

What the dot in Texas, right in the U.S. border, is?

Thank you Mike, These maps make us feel closer.


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## Edwin

> What is the dot in Texas, right on the U.S.-Mexico border?



That must be Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.


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## Etcetera

Awesome!
I hope that St Petersburg will be present on the next version of the map.


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## xarruc

Are these forum visitors (including guests) or members (logged in)?


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## maxiogee

Does this represent 'activity' in any way - or is it just a head-count of those who have given a location/city?


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## geve

Beautiful! Thanks Mike! 

The title says "forum visitor map", so I'd say it lists people who browse the forums (not necessarily registered members); and browsing _is_ an activity... But that's just my uneducated guess.


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## maxiogee

geve said:


> Beautiful! Thanks Mike!
> 
> The title says "forum visitor map", so I'd say it lists people who browse the forums (not necessarily registered members); and browsing _is_ an activity... But that's just my uneducated guess.



You mean that the software can tell what city a browsing visitor is from? Spooky!


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## geve

maxiogee said:


> You mean that the software can tell what city a browsing visitor is from? Spooky!


I think every website can do that (given that the said visitor isn't using complex tricks to intentionally hide their location, like in technological thrillers )


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## xarruc

My website tells me how many people have looked at it and how many times, and gives me the IP address of the most prolific user. All for free. If I wanted to pay then I could find out whether you came by search engine, another web page or typed it in. I would know what you searched for and whether it was Lycos or Google or whatever.


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## TrentinaNE

maxiogee said:


> You mean that the software can tell what city a browsing visitor is from? Spooky!


Actually, I think it can tell where the IP address is registered, which may be a different location from where you reside, depending on the service you use.


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## cirrus

I just love the map of the 500 cities: it appeals greatly to the side of me that wastes hours staring at maps.  Is it possible to map number of hits against relative population size?  Either way Spain hits well above weight.


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## lsp

maxiogee said:


> You mean that the software can tell what city a browsing visitor is from? Spooky!



Some ISPs mask the individual's IP, but most don't. And that's not all that can be known! But it's still beyond the scope of most people who use these programs to associate an actual person with an IP, so don't worry too much about it.


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## maxiogee

I'm not 'worried' about it, I was wondering *how *it knew.


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## KaRiNe_Fr

Thanks Mike for sharing this.
We need more people from Africa and Asia.


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## LV4-26

I wonder what those two towns in Brittany are (top 500). Looks like Rennes and Nantes or something. Curious...


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## lsp

maxiogee said:


> I'm not 'worried' about it, I was wondering *how *it knew.



Thanks to a utility called a *sniffer* that detects information from a site's visitor traffic.


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## EmilyD

Rhode Island is sometimes described as, "a blur on the way to Cape Cod[Massachusetts]", I'm hoping that Providence is one of the top 500.

Thank you, Mike, for posting this.  I greatly enjoy all the analyses.

Nomi


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## Kelly B

Bump.  
Inspired by the "more AE or BE" question plus a vague recollection of that big fat orange Madrid, I went digging. Does the new forum software lend itself to doing this again? You may have done one more recently than this, I don't know, but I couldn't think of any other search terms to try. I'm just glad I could find this one. It's unfortunate the images didn't survive.


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## mkellogg

Hi, Kelly. I'll see if I can retrieve those old images.  I'll check to see if newer stats are any different. Last time I did it, the results were quite similar, though I bet we have more usage from Latin America and around the world now.


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## Kelly B

Great, thanks!


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