Want to see where readers of your blog are geographically?
maps.amung.us might be a tool (toy?) that you find useful. Here’s the ProBlogger reader map (it could take a little time to populate – but it is supposed to be flash based so it won’t need to refresh the page to update)!
Of course it only tracks visitors on the page/s that you run the map on. So this map will only show visitors to this actual post or the blog (until this post drops off the front page). To get around this you could put it in your sidebar.
via TechCrunch
I doubt this will get past the ‘fun toy’ stage.
i guess Europe is awake at the moment – it’ll be interesting to watch the USA waking up in the next few hours.
Hey my country is in there! (D’oh)
Fun toy or not.. it is still a toy
Europe and USA bring a lot more traffic than anywhere else. I guess this tool can be helpful in some way, but not necessary at all.
I normally use google analytics for this. I dont think its gonna be a good option unless you dont have anything to put in your sidebar or it matches perfectly with your site’s design.
Darren,
I guess the link should point to http://maps.amung.us and now http://www.maps.amung.us :)
Interesting! I’m going on a trip around europe and using my blog for an experiment. Will try it out then!
Thank you, put it on the site.
Thanks, Darren. That’s a great tool. I also like the Firefox extension which lets you see the number of people online on a site in real time in the status bar. The danger for me is that I will be navel-gazing for a while!
Interesting resource. Analytics already does something similar to this, where your visitors are tracked down to a city/general area.
I’ve been using whos.amung.us for months now, very happy with them. Currently I have the Firefox add-on in my status bar, it’s nice to see a spike in the live number of people on the site, it usually means something has been dugg or stumbled or getting passed around an email somewhere.
That’s a very nice toy, I like it. I might even put it on my blog for a while :).
Unfortunately, the main ISP for my area (Humboldt County, California) registers as Tyler, Texas. Even local government offices appear that way. So maps like this can’t be trusted for accuracy.
Sweet. I’m one of two Hawaii visitors.
I usually use other services like Clustr Maps or MapLoco, but the concept is the same (this one uses flash though).
You should never underestimate the motivational power of seeing your visitors expressed in little dots! My girlfriend (Molly @ dancingmoogle.wordpress.com) was feeling really down about her blog and was actually about to quit because she thought she wasn’t really getting enough readers (maybe 5-15 per day at the time). Once she added a ClustrMap, she got really excited about blogging again and after a month with ClustrMaps she’s been getting more and more traffic and is pretty happy about it. :)
MapLoco is good because it tells you where people are on top of having the little map, although it is subject to sometimes saying that you’re getting visitors from Tyler, Texas.
Wow!
That’s awesome! It sure is a fun toy – I mean tool.
I’m going to make use of that!
Thanks for the heads up!
Looks fun. But my blog sidebar is too crowded.
Doesnt work for me…
Looks like a good idea however
it doesn’t work for me… ?
I need a non flash version like clustermap (but better)
Doesn’t work for me. The visitors details are only in ‘real time’ and not accumulated. Kinda sucks when you only have 2-3 dots flashing, and you cant tell who visited you when you were sleeping