Monday, December 21, 2009

Top 10 Posts on Google Maps Mania 2009

Here are the top 10 posts on Google Maps Mania in 2009. These are the ten posts that received the most traffic in 2009, in descending order.

1. Maps of the Swine Flu Outbreak

In April the world suffered an outbreak of Swine Flu maps. This post from the beginning of May looks at over 20 Google Maps mashups that attempted to track the spread of Swine Flu around the world.

This post was viewed by over 350,000 visitors, it received over 7 times more traffic than the next favourite post on Google Maps Mania ...

2. Station Fire Maps


The Station Fire in California caused a huge amount of damage and led to the evacuation of over 4,000 homes. Unsurprisingly there was a big spike in traffic from people searching for maps of the fire.

The LA Times produced one of the best and simplest maps of the fire using Google My Maps.

3. Street View Now in the UK

The release of Street View in the UK was a huge media event. Google Maps Mania saw a huge spike in traffic for this post, this was possibly down to the fact that it was one of the most linked to posts of the year.

4. Google Maps, Street View & Bird's Eye View


In April Dual Maps released a tool that allows anybody to make an embeddable map that includes a Google Map, a Google Maps Street View and a Virtual Earth Bird's Eye view of the same location. You can choose between the various options of either map service, which means you can have the Google satellite view alongside Virtual Earth's Bird's Eye view or the satellite/aerial View in both maps etc..

5. Zip Code Google Map

This Google Map mashup will help you find the zip code for anywhere in the United States. Clicking on the map or keying a zip code or address into the search box will zoom the map to the area of that particular zip code.

6. Design Portfolios on Google Maps

This post, looking at designers who have used the Google Maps API to present their portfolios, proved very popular. Again this was a post that benefited from a number of link backs from other websites. This post was also shared quite extensively on Twitter.

7. Australia Wildfire Maps
This post back in February, looking at maps created in response to the Victoria bushfires in Australia, proved once again that in times of natural disasters there is a huge spike in search for maps on the Internet.

8. Real Time Google Maps
The rise of real-time search in 2009 seemed to be reflected in the popularity of this post that looked at some of the real-time maps created with the Google Maps API. The post looks at some of the Twitter maps created and the huge number of maps that now show real-time public transit traffic.

9. The Short Flight of 1549 on Google Maps

Jeral Poskey produced an amazing Google Earth browser plug-in tour of the crash of Flight 1549 that included audio from eight tapes released by the FAA.

10. Google Maps of Sea Level Rises
Global warming was never out of the news in 2009 and this post looking at maps that show the possible effects of sea level rises proved very popular.

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