I was having an e-mail conversation recently with Virtual Earth evangelist
Chris Pendleton and decided to do some minor updates to WorldMaps ... more like maintenance, really. The first update was to change the VE version to 6.1. This adds some cleaner UI features and admittedly, this was a no-brainer update that was overdue.
Another minor feature is to set your default Worldmap report map view -- either from Virtual Earth or the "default" map. When you land on this page (or when visitors from your site click through the image to land on your report page), either the default view or VE map can be shown. You can modify this on the
Worldmap account page, where you can select either Normal, VE Zoomed In (which is what you get by default when clicking the VE link on the Worldmap report), or VE Zoomed Out which gives a slightly more global view, focused more or less on where your location is.
Note, however, that these changes take a refresh cycle (typically about a day) to propagate. That's because the account information is stored with the cached stats file.
Also, I thought it would be a good idea to explain the stats section underneath the map on the Worldmap report. If the account owner specifies a "Site Owner" location on the account page, the IP distribution columns show how distributed the traffic is in relation to the site owner measured in miles. The first column is for all data, the second is filtered to the last 90 days. So, you can see how far away most of your visitors are.
Under the Hit Stats column, Total Hits is simply the sum of all of the hits in the database. Unique IPs represents how many unique IP addresses have hit the map. While unique IPs aren't exactly representative of unique users or individuals who've hit the map, it's certainly a closer approximation than total hits, since a single user may hit a map potentially dozens or hundreds of times.
The Unique Locations statistic shows how many distinct locations around the globe have at least one hit on the specific map. Now, most metro areas have only a few distinct locations -- for example, it could be that several thousand companies all resolve to a single location in New York City. But, a higher number tends to indicate a more diverse audience.
First Hit, Last Hit, Hits Per Day, New IPs Per Day, and New Locations Per Day are all self-explanatory.
World Domination represents how "complete" your map is. That is, of all known IP locations in the database, how many does the map contain? Note, though, that this statistic is only concerned with the actual geographic spot, so it's entirely possible a user with a diverse global audience has a larger World Domination than someone with content more localized.
The last statistic, Unique Domination, is an incredibly small number that represents how many locations are represented only on the specified map, and no other Worldmap.
