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Mapping website visitors in real time

vega.rd.no — A while ago I had an idea. What if I were to try to geographically locate all the visitors to my website, and tag their locations on a map? Using Google Maps, Ajax, MySQL and some PHP, it came together quite nicely.

Who dugg this? Made popular May 8, 2006

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  • jasonprussell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Interesting article. There is a plugin for Mint (www.haveamint.com) called GeoMint (http://www.stopbeingcarbon.com/geomint) which does the same thing.
  • mtvkilledusall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Says that I'm in Norway?
    I'm in Austin.


    Edit: Oh, FTA:
    Notice! At the moment it appears as if www.hostip.info is down. This means that my map won't be updated for a while. Tomorrow I will try to use another geolocator to fix this problem.
  • scairborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4jacks0n... think about the audience here on Digg I think more than a handful have websites and code...digg isn't a bunch of myspace whores... we're a creative culture with a thirst for technology. But thats my opinion...
  • ntnwwnet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://www.gvisit.com does the exact same thing. It's also MUCH easier, just insert a simple javascript on any page you want to track visitors on. It give you a nice Google Maps map that looks like this: http://www.gvisit.com/map.php?sid=f457b5c5699ee2a664a3241421245e6e
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This has been done for ages at http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/geovisitors/
  • fubes2000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2uhh ... that one placed me in an odd spot ...

    not only over 300km south of my actual location, but in the middle of a cemetary to boot. o_o;
  • tobsterius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Forgive me for sounding negative, but doesn't google analytics do this? Which is also free and offers much more.
  • n1ko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yeah there is an article about that over here: http://digg.com/programming/Site_Metrics_Showdown_-_Mint_vs_Google_Analytics_vs_All
  • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2nice idea.. but it has been done many many times before..

    shoutwire.com does this with each of their "shouts" (diggs)
  • abstraxion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I didn't even show up on the map in my region of the country even though there were dozens of other markers and the geolocator was apparently back up. Cool tech though.
  • skytimelapse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Took me about two minutes to complete. I actually may cancel my nextstat account as all that matters to me is count and location. awesome.
  • kilogram, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It will probably take something like 2 minutes before you show up. The traffic from Digg has slowed down the system a bit, and it takes a little while to process the log files. A nice feature for this program would be to highlight the viewers marker using a different color. I guess this might be added later.
  • lieb39, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is awesome! A really nice idea, I'll show a few people this.
  • solaris1201, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0There is a Joomla module which displays recent visitors to the website via Google Maps. It's here http://www.freelance-park.com/joomla
  • kordless, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yes, Google Analytics puts hits on a map, but it's not a Google Map, and it's not updated in real time.

    GA is also currently on an invite only basis - i.e. you have to sign up and wait for them to invite you to use the service. When you do get invited, you have to install code on your site that tracks your visitors - on any pages that you want to track.
  • ArmedGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Agreed. At least in the geek world, it becomes suprising when you run across someone who doesn't have some sort of website.
  • cleaner416, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Big deal. Lots of people have done this for a long time. DJ Jolene (www.djjolene.com) used to do it with listeners to her shoutcast server streams in '02 (lookup triplebluestamp.com in the wayback machine.)
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I am using NeoCOUNTER to do this.
    You can check it out in my blog's sidebar ( http://www.pallab.net ).However it shows only the country.

    www.hostip.info guessed my country correctly but got the location completely wrong ( off target by about 2000km)
  • sam3, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Cool idea.
  • jacks0n, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Handy. But not relevant to most people since they don't own a website. I'm sure as for blogs, they will tell you by who they were referred. MSN spaces does. I'm not sure about blogspot.

    P.S. Wtf, the spell check doesn't pick up 'blogs' or 'MSN'.

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