In a previous post, Visualizing Maps: Google Analytics maps, we saw how Google Analytics maps render when extruded from their context and/or seen as a black & white image.

USA states?

Looking at the USA map where users origin is highlighted darkening the relevant state, the first thing that stands out is you have to know the state name just looking at the map. If this is, or should be, a quite easy task for an American reader, things are not so obvious for someone from Europe or somewhere else. If is it true that you have the detailed list of the states, together with their relevant figures, in a table just under the map image, is it also true that if you just look at the map (as it would be in the case you take the map alone to insert it in a custom layout for printing/slide show) it's not so immediate to find out the state name.

Visualizing maps is a key factor when dealing with statistics and complex data, online maps as the ones used by Google Analytics, the Google service for web statistics, could take advantage of the internet medium to enhance the user interaction but what happens when you have to read those same maps on a different medium (say you what to print them) or with a different format size?

I was reading the web statistics for this very blog, tonight, and I found out that somebody's reached it by searching for what is content optimization. I'm using Google Analytics as the stats application for my blog. It's a free tool offered by the folks at Google, it's quite easy to understand (talking about the basics) while still providing plenty of informations and in-depth data.

Ranking 31st among 68,700,000 Google search results

This is how my blog ranks if you look for that specific text string. And this is all about web content optimization, in the broadest sense of the term.